


Into The Open Air

by little-smartass (Linxcat)



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Claudia isn't sorry but is glad things are different, Louis gets a chance to make decisions for himself, M/M, and Armand has to... recalibrate, in which Lestat remembers how to actually Dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22321609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linxcat/pseuds/little-smartass
Summary: A coffin is brought in. They're going to lock Louis in it and let his starvation drive him mad, then toss Claudia out into the sun.Claudia… they're going to kill her.His confused mind rallies and thoughts begin to properly solidify as a new rage powers him. They're going tokillher. These pathetic little fledglings with delusions of grandeur less than fifty years into the night think that they're going to kill blood-of-his-blood? He, sole heir of Magnus, who drank of the Old Queen herself?They think they're going to killhisdaughter?No.
Relationships: Armand/Louis de Pointe du Lac, Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac
Comments: 16
Kudos: 297





	Into The Open Air

_"I scarcely remember being forced by him out of the carriage and stumbling along the broad pavements as he pushed me towards the theatre doors. What was this place, this enormous building? Was this the boulevard du Temple? And then the descent into that hideous cellar full of ugy copies of the bloodiest paintings of Goya and Brueghel and Bosch._

_And finally the starvation as I lay on the floor of a brick-lined cell, unable even to shout curses at him, the darkness penetrated again and again by the distant screech of iron wheels…_

_And then Armand was there, standing motionless in the shadows, immaculate in the white linen and black wool. He spoke in an undertone about Louis and Claudia, that there would be some kind of trial. Down on his knees he came to sit beside me, forgetting for a moment to be human, the boy gentleman sitting in this filthy damp place. "You will declare before the others, that she did it," he said._

_And the others, the new ones, came to the door to look at me one by one._

_"Get clothing for him," Armand said. His hand was resting on my shoulder, "He must look presentable, our lost lord," he told them, "That was always his way."_

_...And I feared that I was never to be allowed out of there, that I was to be entombed as those starving ones had been under les Innocents, that I had made a fatal mistake. I was stuttering and crying and trying to talk to Armand. And then I realised Armand was not even there. If he had come, he had gone as quickly. I was having delusions."_

-

And then the darkness seems to part, and then that intoxicating scent of vampire blood, blood of his blood, singing to him through the fog in his mind. Two pale figures emerge; Louis, so strong and steadfast and beautiful, and Claudia, so much smaller and more fragile than he remembers, are thrust out of the darkness. Lestat feels his wizened heart flood with fresh affection. Dimly, he is shocked that he can still feel with such intensity for those who betrayed him and left him to die... but he has always been a fool for beauty, for love, hasn't he? And he does love them. His beautiful and terrible fledglings, returned to him. They've returned to him! He wants to weep.

_Focus, Lestat._

Armand's voice slithers into his mind like a snake. Lestat can't see him but he knows the little demon is in the theatre somewhere, squatting in the rafters like an infernal gargoyle. And then like a screw twisting inside of him, suddenly the memories of that terrible night are rekindled. He can feel the flames licking at his skin, the blistering, the acrid smell of his own hair burning, the hatred on Claudia's china-doll face, the disgust on Louis', the flames, the heat, the light, the flames, the flames, the flames-

_Tell them what happened, Lestat. Tell them about the knife and the fire. Tell them what she did to you._

Lestat whimpers and shakes his head, trying to dispel the red haze of rage taking over his mind - or is it just the memory of the fire? His head feels like it's full of early morning bayou mist. He forces himself to focus on Louis. Beautiful, wonderful Louis, come back to him at last.

But Louis is afraid now, fighting the pale hands holding him back, "Tell them Lestat," he's begging, "Tell them that she didn't know!"

She? Lestat looks to Claudia. Her face is an impassive mask, her blue eyes staring out flatly at the scene going on around her. Louis is struggling ferociously against the three vampires holding him, but she stands stock still and only one is needed to restrain her, long white fingers easily encircling her tiny arms.

"She killed one of her own kind. Such an act is punishable by death," Santiago says, voice confident in self-bestowed authority, and Lestat realises this is the trial. Claudia is the accused and he, Lestat, is the victim and star witness all wrapped up in one.

Louis is distraught now, "Lestat!" He cries, "Tell them she didn't know!"

_Tell them what she did to you, Lestat._

What she did to him? The screw turns and it's not the flames this time but the smooth slip of a blade across his neck, the blood gushing, pouring from him, he's drowning in it, wet and sticky and red and wrong wrong wrong, and Louis, so aghast but so far away, he can't reach him-

_Tell them what she did._

What did she do? She softened his heart with the promise of reconciliation, then drugged him and slit his throat and laughed as he bled out on the carpet. And then she stole Louis away!

Yes, yes, this is _her_ fault. The Theatre vampires can have her, deal with the little brat, and he'll get lovely Louis, his own Louis back.

"She did it," Lestat says. His voice is a mortifying little quaver. The other vampires hoot and laugh triumphantly. They jeer and dance around him, mocking him for his weakness, for how tremulous the voice of _the great Lestat_ is. Embarrassment flares and burns into anger. Lestat snarls and tries to push himself up from the chair, but his arms won't cooperate. Louis. He needs Louis. Louis loves him. Louis will help him. He looks around the theatre, where is Louis?

There's Louis, his Louis, but his face is horror-stricken. When Lestat meets his eyes, Louis stares at him, imploring. Lestat wants to cry. Doesn't Louis know? Doesn't Louis understand how much he needs him? How can he not understand?

"You've got to come back with me," Lestat pleads in his mortifying croak of a voice, "There's something I need to tell you about that night, in the swamp…"

I love you. I don't blame you. _Please_. The words are stuck in his throat. Louis looks genuinely shocked for a moment, then he laughs. Lestat loves his low, gentlemanly laugh, but this is not that, this is loud and manic.

It reminds him, absurdly, of Nicki. Panic sends his heart thundering in his chest. But no, no, Louis isn't like Nicki, Lestat reminds himself, Louis is sad but he's also strong and sane and steadfast, that was why Lestat _chose_ him.

"You must be mad!" Louis chokes out.

Mad to ask for his help. Mad to think he would come. Mad to think he still loves him.

Louis doesn't want him. Louis doesn't love him anymore, Louis wants _Armand_. A terrible surge of rage and despair broils inside Lestat; he can't decide if he wants to scream or weep.

"The child is condemned!" Santiago decrees, "She killed one of her own!"

Louis' face crumbles. He looks frantically between the monsters holding him, to Claudia, then back to Lestat. Something in him seems to break and there's no longer defiance, just desperation, "Alright, I'll come with you. I'll come back to New Orleans with you, please, just help her! Tell them she didn't know!"

It's a lie, though. Lestat knows that Louis won't come back to him now, not for anything - it's the laugh that says it all. No, Louis will fight him tooth and nail forever.

Louis will fight him and the other vampires for as long as it takes to keep Claudia safe. He'll fight them the way he didn't fight when Lestat needed him the most, when he was convulsing on the floor under Claudia's treacherous damned knife!

Rage fills Lestat's gut. This is Claudia's doing - that little viper, turning Louis against him, taking him away and throwing him into Armand's arms! He pushes himself up as hard as he can from his chair, staggers upright, and turns towards her, a snarl on his lips. And then just as quickly as it came, the rage vanishes.

Claudia's mask has slipped. As he bares his fangs and looms over her, he sees something he has never witnessed in the seventy years since she was turned.

She reacts to him in fear.

Oh, he's sensed it in her before, but always, always, even when she was quite young, she hid it under anger and bitterness, layered up like petticoats. Here, in this dark place full of strangers crowing excitedly about murdering her, she shows fear only when _he_ turns on her. She flinches away from him totally involuntarily, eyes wide. The vampire holding her howls with laughter.

Something twists his heart, though it's not Armand in his head this time, it's something new to him. It's _shame_. It fills his stomach and creeps up his throat like acid. His knees buckle and he slumps back in his chair. He knows what it is to be a child held down by cruel hands and waiting, terrified, for the wrath of a raging father. He's not sure if Gabrielle ever begged for him the way Louis is pleading for Claudia, but looking into her face with its wide eyes, mane of blond curls, and dirt-smudged cheeks, it's so easy to see himself now through the eyes of his childhood self.

His head spins. He thinks he may vomit. He can't tear his gaze away from her.

 _She tried to kill you_ , Armand purrs into his mind, _That little minx, that little viper. She betrayed you, Lestat._

She did. She _did_ try and kill him. She's a vicious little monster full of violence, far too clever for her own good, without an ounce of regret in her soul…

...Though isn't that exactly what he raised her to be?

Lestat feels distant from the whole thing, like he's floating outside of his body. Claudia, Claudia, there's a thought just beyond his reach about this whole thing if he could just _focus_ long enough to catch it. The world around him wobbles. Spots of darkness threaten to close on his vision. It takes all of his will to cling onto the thought and onto the moment. Claudia, _Claudia_. The room reamerages from the dark and he can see her face again. The thought clarifies in his mind.

She's a perfect vampire. All these skills she used to kill him were lessons _he_ taught her.

There's a scraping noise from the corridor outside, and suddenly Louis starts struggling again, "Lestat, _please_!" He gasps, he doesn't want Lestat anymore but he's not too proud to beg when it comes to the life of his daughter.

 _Their_ daughter.

After all, it was _Lestat_ who gave Claudia the blood, _he_ cradled her in his arms as her mortal body died, _he_ stalked alongside her in the dark for seven decades as the numerous unfortunate of New Orleans fell to feed them. _He_ brushed her hair, _he_ twirled her in the ballrooms, _he_ took her out to find beautiful new dresses and bonnets, _he_ taught her to play the pianoforte, _he_ bought her the birds, _he_ found her the books Louis disapproved of and winked as they shared a secretive smile.

A coffin is brought in. They're going to lock Louis in it and let his starvation drive him mad, then toss Claudia out into the sun.

Claudia… they're going to kill her.

His confused mind rallies and thoughts begin to properly solidify as a new rage powers him. They're going to _kill_ her. These pathetic little fledglings with delusions of grandeur less than fifty years into the night think that they're going to kill blood-of-his-blood? He, sole heir of Magnus, who drank of the Old Queen herself?

They think they're going to kill _his_ daughter?

No.

He grips the arms of the chair and braces himself to stand. For the first time in years he feels _strong_ again.

_What are you doing, Lestat?_

He feels Armand's claws sink further into his mind. The room tilts and spins again. He shakes his head, tries to fight them off, but they go deep and he can feel them rooting around for a soft spot to strike.

A memory is dragged forward. A shadowy bedroom lit by a single yellow gaslight. A grand four-poster bed with sheets that smell stale from lack of use. Louis sat cross-legged in front of him, inky black hair half out of its ribbon, collar askew and cravat undone, green eyes dark with desire as he fumbles with Lestat's waistcoat buttons, clumsy in his eagerness. And then he pauses, and looks up at Lestat. There's so much gentle tenderness in his expression that Lestat could weep, and he remembers that he nearly did in that moment. Louis lifts a hand to run a thumb across Lestat's lips, he smiles and softly, lovingly whispers, "Armand."

Armand?

It's as if Lestat is booted out of his own body as he is flung to the side. A completely different shadowy bedroom, one in the catacombs below the theatre, and it's Armand on the bed getting his face caressed and waistcoat buttons undone, being pushed gently down into the pillows where _Lestat_ should be, being kissed by Louis' lips, feeling Louis' hands, warm from that night's kill, slip under his shirt, and no, no, this moment belongs to _him_! How dare Armand try and taint it!

Lestat wrestles himself out of the memory, gasping, and hears Armand's laughter in his mind.

_I've tasted him, you know. He came to me and we had each other and in his blood I could still taste you there._

No!

_I've been in his mind too. Oh Lestat, if only you could see it yourself. So sad, so beautiful, such dark depths! And he's sworn to himself that he'll never, never go back to you._

It hits Lestat like a blow to the stomach. He sags in his chair. He knew it already, but the memory… the confirmation...The world seems to move in slow-motion as Louis kicks and gnashes his teeth at the vampires trying to force him over to the coffin, swearing that Armand will punish them for their actions, utterly unaware of the irony of his words. Claudia is pale and small as the crowd manhandle her, tearing at her dress and pulling at her hair. The fog is encroaching on his mind again, urging him to succumb to his despair, reminding him of his helplessness.

 _You've condemned her, and he's going to hate you for it forever,_ Armand laughs, _Congratulations Lestat._

 _Get out!_ Lestat projects furiously. He feels tears break from his eyes and roll down his cheeks. Louis is being swarmed by the vampires like ants as they carry him, and Claudia's round little face emerges from the dark sea of their cloaks, mouth open in a silent scream. Everything is loud and overwhelming and he can't _think_ with the chanting of the coven and Armand laughing, echoing inside his skull-

"For the love of god, will you get out of my _HEAD!_ " Lestat bellows, dragging together the dregs of his strength and _pushing_ with his mind until he feels Armand's tendrils retreat. He feels a flare of panic and he realises that it's not him - it's Armand, desperately scrabbling for control - but as the presence is forced to retreat, at once Lestat feels clearer, more alert, more confident. When he opens his eyes he realises the movement in the room has paused, the vampires physically pained and dazed by his outburst at full preternatural volume, some of them even on their knees clutching at their ears. Louis and Claudia are both staring at him in amazement.

"Let her go," Lestat snarls, staggering to his feet, "Let her go right now and do not presume to touch her again."

Lestat forces his brain to work through the situation, to fight through the fog and the thirst. Louis has called for Armand, and that makes his allegiances clear enough. Let _Armand_ rescue him! But Claudia, she could be saved. He won't let these gibbering little creatures try to destroy a vampire of far superior lineage. Traitor or not, she's his daughter. And he's _not_ the lingering spectre of his father.

He's _not_.

"The girl is condemned," Celeste spits.

"I take my accusation back. She didn't know the laws."

Louis stares at him, eyes wide, something like hope in his face, and even Claudia’s mask has slipped again, the shock clear on her features. The other vampires glance between themselves, taken aback, unsure. He can hear the whispers between their minds - _this isn't what Armand said_ …

 _What are you doing?_ Armand snarls, and there's that flash of panic again, beating against his mind, but Lestat holds his ground. He casts a thought out to try and pinpoint the little ringleader, but as Lestat reaches he disappears somewhere out of reach. There's not much Armand could do to intervene directly now anyway, as any sign of his presence will bring down the curtain and reveal to dear, besotted Louis who the real villain of this piece is.

"The judgement has already been pronounced!" Santiago snaps, shaking himself out of his momentary hesitation, "Your retraction means nothing."

Louis steps forward, glaring at a vampire who attempts to pull him back, then deliberately stands between Claudia and the rest of the vampire pack, "This is ridiculous," he says, in what Lestat recognises as the voice uses when he's trying to sound particularly reasonable, "Look, Armand is the leader of this coven, is he not? He is your elder, whom you follow? It's getting close to sunrise - why not wait until tomorrow, when Armand has returned, to sort this out? If he is the leader then let _him_ pass judgement here."

The vampires glance between each other again. It's true that the dawn is approaching; Lestat can already feel the lassitude that heralds the sun and he is the eldest by far of those here, so the others must already be feeling that siren-call of the deathsleep. He notices Santiago cock his head to one side for a moment, his whole body going still.

Getting orders from Armand, Lestat realises. The plan has changed. Lestat tenses, ready for whatever backstab might be next.

Then Santiago shakes himself, expression grim.

"We will wait," he says, clearly reluctant to relinquish the opportunity for violence this night - and several of the other vampires immediately raise their voices in protest, but he turns to hiss at them, "We will wait for the coven leader! Unless you are willing to completely turn against the old ways?"

Lestat blinks, genuinely shocked. No killing? And… the old ways? Has Armand managed to indoctrinate these fools just as he had the miserable wretches beneath _Les Innocents?_ Good god. Though that was how this theatre coven had begun, even if Lestat can't see any of those original players in this group. Armand is certainly consistent, if nothing else. And if these vampires have been entrenched in the old ways, then a little theatricality might just give them the upper hand.

"You might want to hurry up," Lestat drawls. He tries for menace but his voice is still cracked and weak, so it's not his most effective performance, "My blood is old, and it affords myself and my fledglings the luxury of awakening rather early. You'll want to be safely hidden away in your coffins when my little family is on the prowl," he tilts his head towards Claudia, "This one has a taste for throat-slitting," he nods at Louis, "And that one, arson."

It works surprisingly well. A rumble of unease passes around the group, and Louis and Claudia play their parts well by staying impassive through it.

Santiago stalks thoughtfully over to Lestat. He stops just an arm's length away, and then snaps out a hand lightning fast to shove Lestat in the chest. To his humiliation, he is not strong enough to hold his ground against it and is slammed against the back of the chair, winded and gasping. Santiago smirks and addresses the group.

"This one and the child are weak, we can put them in the cell," he turns and eyes Louis assessingly, "Put _this_ one in the coffin."

Louis, already preternaturally pale, seems to blanch further and shrink into himself at the prospect, but when the coffin is opened before him he shakes off the hands gripping him and steps inside with his jaw clenched and chin up, the very picture of dignity. Before he lies down he looks over at Claudia, gaze focused, as if trying to commit her features to memory, and then - Lestat's heart gives a strange jolt - Louis takes a moment to stare at _him_. Like Louis is afraid it might be the last chance he gets. As Louis disappears into the box and the lid is slammed shut, Lestat wishes for the thousandth time, despite the bitterness curling in his gut, that he could break the wall of silence between the minds of maker and fledgling.

As the coffin is carried away, Lestat and Claudia are led down into the very bowels of the theatre, back into that tiny dingy cell. The prospect of returning to it holds as much horror for him as being forced into a coffin did for Louis, but now he's broken Armand's hold over his mind some of the blind terror has receded. At least he knows he will not sit here mired in his ravings for eternity; at the very least, he will be brought out again tomorrow night. And something about having Claudia beside him is… grounding. He's never been able to predict her. His mind could not conjure her up with any kind of realism. She is true, she is fact. He can rely on that.

Just before the thick metal door is slammed shut, Claudia's stony mask drops again and she asks frantically, "What have you done with Madeleine?"

The vampire who had frog-marched them down - some lackey fledgling Lestat doesn't know the name of - gives an unpleasant laugh but doesn't answer. Claudia doesn't react until they've disappeared down the corridor, at which point she exhales a long breath and murmurs, "Dead, then."

Lestat is too exhausted to ask. There were a lot of stairs between the theatre and the cell, and it had taken all of his will to preserve his dignity and stay on his feet during the arduous walk. He eases his battered body down onto the floor and leans against one of the walls. Claudia remains standing, staring at the door as if she could batter it down with her mind. In a few hundred years, maybe she'll be able to.

He shuts his eyes and shifts his head from side to side, trying to find the least painful position to rest.

"Why did you do it?" She asks. Her voice is quiet but firm. He keeps his eyes shut.

"Do what?"

"You know what."

 _Because I could never really hate you_ , he wants to say. _Because you're my daughter and I'm still angry but really, I think I forgave you years ago. Because you're just like me._

Lestat sighs, and shifts again, like he's more focused on settling in than talking, "You might want to get comfortable before the deathsleep takes you. You've never had to sleep rough before, but you should know even vampires aren't immune to getting a crick in the neck."

Claudia doesn't respond. Lestat opens his eyes a crack and notices her surreptitiously glancing around at the floor of the small cell. To be honest, Lestat would be bothered by the grime too if he hadn't been forced into these terrible borrowed clothes, but even with its rips and creases Claudia's still somewhat precious about her dress. She's never had to sleep in a cellar, or a graveyard, or buried in the earth, and she doesn't remember her earliest mortal years of poverty; she only knows the luxury of the gilded cage he and Louis built for her.

When she starts scuffing at one corner of the floor with the heel of her shoe, as if trying to clear a clean space for herself, he gives in with a sigh.

"Come here," he says, gesturing with his arms out. She shrinks back and gives him a look of disdain, but he can see the lethargy of the looming deathsleep creeping into her face, "I like to think I'm a little more comfortable than the floor, and I'm certainly more clean."

Claudia hesitates, clearly weighing him up as a threat, and balancing her pride against the prospect of lying on a dirty stone floor. She opens her mouth, as if to say something, then shuts it quickly, face twisting into a resigned grimace as she shuffles across the room and climbs into his lap. Something about the gesture - the familiarity of her curling her little body against his, the ease with which she settles herself against his chest, the way she smothers a yawn as she tucks her head under his chin - makes his heart ache in nostalgia for that first few beautiful decades of her life when she'd been a child in mind as well as form. When she hadn't hesitated with her affection and she thought he was clever and funny and would slip her hand into his as they walked back from the nightly hunt, swinging their arms merrily and singing with him in her sweet little girl voice.

It occurs to him somewhat painfully that, despite everything, he's missed her. He hugs her, lightly, hesitantly, and she doesn't push him away.

"I'm not sorry," she growls into his shirt, fists balling in the material, "Not for any of it, and this doesn't make it all alright."

Lestat says nothing; it hurts a little to hear the words but he's far too tired now to start a fight.

"But… I am glad that you're not dead."

He chuckles, gently carding his fingers through Claudia's hair, working out the tangles the way he used to with a comb when she was young. She makes a sleepy noise and then her whole body becomes a literal deadweight as the deathsleep takes her.

Lestat rests his head back against the wall, closes his eyes, and lets the darkness pull him under too.

-

He knows it's early in the evening when he next opens his eyes. The deathsleep isn't actually restorative in the way sleeping is for mortals, but psychologically he feels rested and more alert. It's not long before Claudia stirs and climbs out of his lap to stretch.

"Well," she says brusquely, "We weren't killed in our sleep."

Something about her matter-of-fact tone reminds him oddly of Gabrielle. For so long his plan had been to recover enough strength to get to Paris and ask Armand for his help, but he'd never much considered what he'd do afterwards; now he thinks he'd like to try and find his mother again. Perhaps, he thinks, watching Claudia restlessly pace the cell like a caged tiger, he'll bring his daughter along to meet her. Gabrielle would be furious, at first, to find he'd turned a child, but she'd forgive him - she always did - and would get on so well with Claudia.

Maybe even well enough to stick around for a little while.

He shoves the surge of emotions that come with that down. They won't help him here.

"Will we actually have a trial, do you think?" Claudia asks dispassionately, walking the length of the cell from the door to the opposite wall and examining the bricks, as if looking for weakness.

"No," Lestat says after a moment of thought, "Armand will go straight to Louis and free him, and then I believe they will come along and free _us_ \- he needs to be the hero of this story, you see, so Louis will want him."

"Armand has been here the whole time, hasn't he?" Claudia asks, though it's less a question and more a confirmation, "Louis may have a blind spot for him, but I heard his whispers in my mind the moment we arrived at the theatre."

Lestat nods, "Yes, he poured poison in my ears too," he curls his lip, "You could call that his speciality."

Claudia narrows her eyes, "You know Armand, don't you?"

Lestat hesitates, a habit bourne of seven decades trying to follow Marius' edict to keep his fledglings ignorant. That threat rings somewhat hollow now; secrecy didn't stop Louis and Claudia from turning against him, only soured everything. And besides, if Marius wants to punish him for talking, he'll have to start with his own darling, as Armand seems to be spreading the old lore with abandon. After so long, it's actually a relief to let go of the subterfuge and just be honest.

"I met him many years ago here in Paris, shortly after I was turned. He was living in a graveyard with a little cult of cronies, and I… well, I suggested he modernise and move to this theatre," Lestat smiles at his own somewhat truncated summary, but then the memory of Nicki's mistreatment looms up like a spectre, and he sobers, "Armand wants very much to be loved, but he's only good at making people hate him. It's why he's trying so hard with Louis."

Claudia is genuinely taken aback at being given a real answer, and immediately pounces on the opportunity as if she believes he might suddenly rescind his openness, "He can speak inside my mind - can you do that? Can _I_ learn to speak in others' minds?"

"I cannot say for sure," Lestat shrugs, "Some have the gift, and some do not."

"But _you_ can?"

He pauses, weighing up his answers, "I can, yes. Though admittedly I am not as proficient as our Monsieur Chérubin."

Claudia ignores the joke, "You must teach me, then, and teach me how to keep other mind-readers out," she demands, "I will not have anyone violate me in such a way again; I don't have size or strength on my side, I must have _some_ kind of weapon."

She stands in front of him, arms folded and brows lowered severely, and something about her expression combined with her tattered dress, grimy round face, and her mane of tangled golden curls makes affection kindle deep in his heart. It's very fortunate indeed that she has no way of reading his thoughts, because most of them are currently centred around how _cute_ she looks. And if she were to find that out, it's very possible that she might just try and kill him again.

"If we make it out of here, then I'll think about it," he says. Claudia purses her lips, but nods curtly. Something about the gesture brings Gabrielle to mind again, and before he can think better of it, he says, "You remind me of someone."

Claudia, stalking back over to the cell door, makes a somewhat disinterested noise.

"You remind me of my mother."

That makes Claudia stop abruptly. He continues, "You two share no blood besides mine, but you _look_ so similar - and sometimes, your mannerisms - it's uncanny."

Claudia turns at that, slowly, eyes wide. She seems disarmed by his words, and he watches her struggle to decide how to react; surprise, confusion, and suspicion all pass over her face, along with an expression he can't quite place that looks almost pained. She settles on a small frown.

"Why are you telling me this?" She asks. Her voice is quiet but her tone is defensive. He's upset her, somehow.

"Why should I not?" He says. As if it's nothing. As if Gabrielle isn't an olive branch, a thread that could unravel his whole past with one good tug.

Claudia is clearly struggling to hold her pride over her curiosity, and ultimately she fails, as she asks stiffly, "You said she shares your blood too, do you mean-?"

"That she's a vampire? Yes, she is. She took to it like a duck to water," he gives her a smile, "Just like you did."

Claudia runs her hands through her hair, then walks back and sits down in front of him. The last of her poise slips away and in her eagerness she seems like a real child, "Well, where- where is she? Can you call to her with your mind, the way Armand does, and ask her to help us?"

"I don't know where she is," Lestat admits bitterly, "Somewhere green and far away from any others of our kind, most likely."

"But can you reach her?"

"I can't, she's-" Lestat cuts himself off abruptly, freezing, "...Can you smell that?"

Claudia frowns, sniffing, and then her eyes grow wide, "Smoke. That's smoke - I can hear the flames!"

They sit in silent horror for a few seconds, just staring at each other. And then Claudia runs to the cell door, desperately rattling it.

"Can you do it?" She asks over her shoulder as Lestat hauls himself to his feet with some difficulty. He gives her a dubious grimace but summons what strength he has to ram it with his shoulder. Unsurprisingly, it has little effect. With his still-healing injuries, he's as weak as a mortal man.

Claudia's face goes blank, retreating back into her mask, "It's Armand, isn't it?" She says in a flat voice, "He wants us dead so he can have Louis to himself."

Lestat cocks his head towards the corridor; underneath the furious crackling of flames, he can hear footsteps - a human, perhaps, gallant enough to try and extinguish the fire? - but no, they move with a supernatural grace and speed. His heart lifts. He'd know that gait anywhere. He'd heard it on the stairs every night for sixty five years.

He presses his face against the small slot in the door and yells, "Louis!" as loud as he can. The footsteps pause, then start up again in their direction. Lestat shouts again and Claudia joins in, her high-pitched scream projecting impressively, and after a few agonising moments, Louis' pale, dirt-smudged face appears.

"Merci dieu, are you both alright?" He asks breathlessly, then Lestat watches through the slot as Louis wrenches the lock off the door in an uncharacteristic demonstration of vampire strength. The whole move is so effortless that it leaves Lestat, despite the urgency of the fire, suddenly desperate to grab Louis by his lapels and thoroughly make up for several decades of lost time.

He doesn't get the chance, as when the door swings open Claudia immediately shoves past him and throws herself into Louis' arms. He embraces her tenderly but briefly, then shifts her onto his hip and looks over to Lestat - and Lestat hopes he's not imagining the ghost of a smile twitching the corners of Louis' mouth.

"There's not much time - we set the whole upper floor of the theatre on fire, which should hopefully take care of most of those devils, but if they wake up in time to escape before they are consumed they may still follow us."

Lestat frowns, "We?"

" _Armand_ ," Claudia growls, and Lestat feels somewhat vindicated by the vitriol in her voice and the way Louis clenches his jaw in response.

"He got me out of that coffin, showed me where the exits are, and has a carriage waiting for us," Louis responds in a somewhat reprimanding tone. He sets Claudia back down on the ground and gives Lestat's emaciated frame an appraising once over, "Can you run?"

"Perhaps with an infusion of blood," Lestat says, baring his teeth in a leer - and he knows it's a terrible thing to say the moment Louis glares at him, but with so much talk of Armand, and Louis being so disheveled and handsome and commanding, it's difficult not to try and provoke him just a _little_ bit, "Then no," he finishes, with a nonchalant shrug, as if the rejection hadn't stung at all.

"Alright then," Louis gestures to Claudia as he pulls Lestat's arm over his shoulder, "The exit should be down the corridor to the right, up a flight of stairs; go ahead and make sure it's not blocked off."

Claudia sets off at the fastest pace her little legs can carry her, tattered skirts flying out behind, and Lestat hobbles after her with Louis' help. Being so close to Louis again makes his heart sing and his skin tingle at each place they're in contact, but there's a tension between them that sours his excitement. It's familiar and bittersweet.

"Playing the knight in shining armour suits you," Lestat says, grinning, trying to deflect from the awkwardness, how out of breath he is from just struggling to walk, and the rather worrying sound of the theatre collapsing above them. It works; Louis lets out a low huff that could almost be a laugh, then ducks his head. Such a bashful gesture, such a _Louis_ gesture.

Then Louis glances at Lestat out of the corner of his eye, face turning solemn, "I'll give you the blood, you know. If you need it. I'd just prefer you be more… discreet."

A habitual cruel impulse surges up in Lestat and tells him to snap something about Louis leaving him to die, _hurt him, how he hurt you, before he can hurt you again_ , it screams. However, a matching feeling rises to meet it, one that is absurdly touched by the offer, knowing how much it means to Louis, one that compels him to be more gentle because honestly, really, he doesn't actually _want_ to hurt Louis. He swallows heavily.

"I was joking," Lestat croaks. He hadn't been, not at all, though he'd never expected Louis to acquiesce, so perhaps the whole thing was just a big joke in the end, "Your blood is too weak to be of much help anyway."

Louis says nothing, but his eyes darken and his jaw tightens as he looks away pointedly. Regret tugs sharply at Lestat's gut, and he wonders if he could cram his whole fist in his mouth. Put it in and leave it there, so he can't say anything more _stupid_. Before he can think of what to say to make it right, Claudia comes barreling around the corner.

"I've found the door but I can't open it, I think it must be barred from the other side!"

Louis releases Lestat's arm and hurries after her, and Lestat is left to shuffle after them as fast as he can manage. He finds them just as Louis' shoulder impacts heavily with the door, though the move is about as effective as Lestat's had been on the cell door, as it doesn't budge at all, which is… wrong, somehow. Louis ought to be able to bash it down with little difficulty, what's happening here?

There's a deafening crash further down the corridor as the ceiling begins to collapse under the fire. Louis gathers Claudia behind him, as if there's something, anything he can do to protect her from the approaching blaze.

Lestat reaches with his mind to try and find Armand, casting out his thoughts as loudly as he can to anyone who may be listening, _Open the door, you little cretin! You've won your prize, will you now leave him to burn?_

There's no response. Another crash, the corridor lights up golden and flickering. The air's getting thin, which doesn't matter to them as vampires and shouldn't bother him, but it makes his chest feel tight, which brings on panic. Perhaps he misread Armand's intentions. Perhaps he's not playing the long game. Perhaps his intention this whole time was nothing but to be revenged on Lestat, and he really will let them all burn. It's why the door is barred, he realises. He means to trap them down here.

He feels Louis' hand slip into his and squeeze it gently. Lestat wants desperately to look at him, but he can't quite bear it. He knows there will be some tender expression on his face, something sad and beautiful and resolute, something so very _Louis_ , and after all the awful things they've done to each other he's not sure he can cope with it.

The flames lick closer.

And then the door bursts open and Armand is there, because of _course_ he is, gesturing frantically to them, cape flapping, every inch the hero of the hour. For a moment Lestat is too relieved to resent him.

"Hurry!" Armand yells, ushering them away from the fire and out into the blessed cool of the night, "To the carriage!"

Lestat pours all the remains of his strength into running - or at least staggering at a moderate pace. He half expects Armand to turn and shove him back into the flames, but Louis, ever the gentleman, ensures that Lestat and Claudia go out into the safety of the dank alleyway before he does, and so there is no opportunity for sabotage.

The first thing he is aware of is how sharp and fresh the air seems in his lungs; then the acrid smell of smoke; and then the screaming.

Vampires are highly flammable. He knows this first hand.

He has very little sympathy for them.

After what feels like a veritable marathon in his weakened state, he reaches the end of the alleyway and the squat shape of the carriage looms ahead, silhouetted against the night by the bright flare of the flames now overtaking the theatre. Every incline is a mountain, every cobble threatens to send him tumbling, but what's left of his vampire grace keeps him on his feet. Armand reaches the carriage first, and leaps up onto the front to take the reins. Louis is next; he wrenches open the carriage door, hops onto the running board, lifts Claudia around her waist, and propels her swiftly inside - and then he turns and offers a hand out to Lestat, fingers stretching across the yawning gap between them.

The smoke is addling his mind, the light and the smells and the shrieking and groaning overwhelming his senses… or perhaps it's Armand again, he's so exhausted he can hardly tell any more. All Lestat can do is stare at the pale hand, those long soot-covered fingers so finely made but so deft and strong. There's a dizziness in his head and his vision darkens around the edges, all he can do is lurch forwards and heave for breath his body doesn't need.

An almighty crash behind him. Lestat takes the final few steps, clutches at Louis' hand, then turns back to look.

It's something out of a nightmare.

Celeste has broken out into the night. She is mostly unscathed, only covered in the debris of the door and soot, but she blunders towards them, pale face full of rage. Louis shoves Lestat into the carriage somewhat unceremoniously, and as he scrambles onto a seat he looks back to see Louis blocking the doorway with his body. He's not armed, and is just as flammable as Celeste, so as noble as it is it's a somewhat pointless gesture.

"Get in!" Claudia shrieks, clambering across the seat to tug at his waistcoat. But he doesn't move, and Lestat looks over his shoulder and realises what he's seen.

Celeste's black trailing cloak has caught alight. It takes only a few seconds to eat up the intricate lace edging and follow it up her back before it reaches her hair. Her eyes grow wide as she feels the heat on her scalp; her hands fly up immediately, as if she's trying to cage the flames with her grasping white fingers. Panic grips her as the fire works through the shoulders of her cloak and starts to consume the outer layers of her dress, and she flails desperately, giving up on her course towards them and instead charging away, southward, towards the banks of the Seine.

But running only fans the fire. After a few seconds her petticoats catch, and then, like a demonic Jeanne d'Arc on the pyre, Celeste becomes a pillar of screaming flames.

She keeps running, disappearing down the street into the night, her shrill voice echoing back after her. Lestat remembers the night he was set ablaze, and how strong that instinct to escape his own burning flesh had been, and how _he'd_ run.

He hopes someone scatters her ashes before she can come back.

He shakes his head and returns to the present. They're not moving, why are they not moving?

Louis has paused on the running board, one foot on the ground and both hands gripping the doorway, to look over his shoulder back at the burning destruction of the theatre. The fire lights up the contours of his sharp profile handsomely; the furrow of his brow, the tightness in his jaw, the haunted look in those deep green eyes. Lestat realises that it's the screams, both Celeste's still echoing and those coming from the burning husk of the theatre - Louis is shaken by the results of his own treachery, and he wonders if Louis had looked back at Rue Royale like this, with such horror and grief.

"Louis…" says Claudia, quietly but urgently. He doesn't move.

" _Louis_ ," Lestat hisses, "Louis get _in_."

Still nothing. Louis is transfixed.

And then the carriage rocks slightly and Armand is there, dropping down to clasp Louis reassuringly by the elbow, leaning in and meeting his eyes in such a way that Lestat knows they are exchanging thoughts, then pushing Louis a little through the doorway as he returns to the horses. Louis immediately shakes himself and climbs into the carriage.

Lestat feels a stab of jealousy, and Claudia must feel it too, as she doesn't move to sit in Louis' lap, just stares dully at him. He's lost to them, now. _Both_ of them. What a strange turn of the tables.

They don't say much as the carriage takes them away from the fiery remains of the theatre, just sit in weary silence and avoid eye contact, stewing in their own thoughts and the cloying smoky smell of their clothes. After a few minutes Louis blinks out of his reverie and holds out his arms to Claudia, offering purely out of habit, and she rejects him with an imperious flick of her hand. He seems a little sad, though unsurprised, and he returns to staring out of the window. Lestat is close enough to him that their boots brush when the carriage jostles, but in that moment they might as well be thousands of miles apart.

Lestat realises after a while that, judging by the direction that they're moving away from the city, they're heading to the tower. Something strange twists inside of him at that thought - at the thought of Louis and Claudia being there, these two parts of his life colliding. He looks at Louis, long fingers curled beneath his sooty chin, long legs stretched gracefully out in front of him, and Claudia, eyes fixed out of the opposite window, half hidden in a pile of spoilt yellow silk and white lace petticoats. Abruptly he's struck with the oddest desire to unload his heart and past to them. He wants to tell them everything.

 _This is where he took me, when I was so young and proud and foolish_ , he wants to say. _This is where I screamed and cried and fought and begged, and where he took me anyway, pinned me down on that bed, and took my life. This is where he jumped into the flames, this is where all those boys who could have been my brothers died, and this is where I awoke in the night, the golden monster, orphaned. Do you see? Do you see, now, why I couldn't tell you?_

But he doesn't. He doesn't say any of it. He clenches his jaw against the lump in his throat, rests his head back against the leather seat, and falls into a fitful doze.

He's not sure how much time has passed when he feels the carriage pull up to a stop, only that the night is still relatively young. Lestat opens his eyes and immediately tenses as he sees the familiar landscape. Louis must notice, as when Lestat turns away from the window Louis is frowning curiously at him - though when their eyes meet, he immediately looks away and busies himself with helping Claudia out of the carriage. Louis extends a hand to him, too, and Lestat very much wants to refuse it, to reject him with one of Claudia's regal little gestures, but the prospect of his legs giving way on the step is a much greater threat to his pride.

Louis' hand is cold. He needs to feed, Lestat reflects, looking over his alabaster pale skin and gaunt face as he's helped out of the carriage. Lestat is hungry too, but he hasn't had a good meal in years so the edge of the pain is dulled as it gnaws at him. He's used to living off scraps by now.

Claudia too is peaky and so white she almost glows in the moonlight as she stands, framed by the tall dark trees and the imposing structure of the tower and manor house. She doesn't flinch when Armand reappears after stabling the horses, but Lestat does see her whole body tense.

"Come," says Armand, pulling a ring of keys from his cloak and gliding towards the house, "The coven do not know of this place, we will be safe here until tomorrow night."

Lestat hadn't paid much attention to the house the last time he'd been there; he'd been delirious and exhausted from starvation and travel, and entirely focused on attempting to convince Armand to give him the blood, so his only impressions had been that it was large and dark. Now, walking inside as Armand swings open the huge front door, those impressions are reinforced tenfold. The walls are all panelled in oak, and all of the furnishings are in deep dusty colours that blend in the gloom, even when Armand spirits a candelabra from somewhere to light their way. On the floor, cold tiles pick out dizzying patterns in black and red; on the walls, more of Bosch, or ancient tapestries absorbing and blanketing all sound.

Lestat hates it. It leaves him feeling on-edge in a way he can't quite explain. The shadows feel oppressive and haunting, and all the worse for his knowledge that the tower is looming over them. He shuffles after Louis - who is enthralled in his usual restrained way - and Claudia - who is mute and still as tense and tight as a bow string, as Armand gives them a tour of the place.

"Every window has wooden shutters on the inside," Armand explains, gesturing to a pair demonstratively as they pass, "And four inch thick velvet curtains, so that one of our kind could sleep in any room and not feel the sun."

Louis makes a low noise of appreciation at the idea and when he pauses to examine the shutters, Lestat sees a small gratified smile, lightning fast, flicker around Armand's mouth. It's difficult to blame him. Louis' full attention is intoxicating, and Lestat would do - and has done - many things more terrible than a little showing off to get it.

"Not that I don't appreciate the tour," Claudia says abruptly, pointedly loud in the silence of the huge house, "But may we be shown to somewhere we can wash, and make ourselves decent?"

Another expression moves across Armand's face, almost too fast to catch, and it looks like anger. But then that pale visage is smooth and easy again, and he's back to being the genial host once more, "My apologies, of course. Right this way."

The politeness unnerves Lestat. He's waiting any second for Armand to turn and pull the rug out from under their feet, to show his true colours, like he did when Lestat was here with him alone, but the host persona persists as he shows them to a corridor of bedrooms. Armand sets down the candelabra and turns on the gaslights, illuminating the everything in a weak yellow glow, then waves a hand towards the doors to indicate they may choose.

Lestat peers around the first door; not a coffin in sight. Just a large four-poster bed veiled with heavy drapes. The whole room is impeccably decorated with high-quality furnishings, and even if they're not especially to Lestat's taste, he must admit that it's a splendid place. It also has its own washbasin, with soap and a jug of water ready on the side.

Waiting.

Lestat's fingers on the doorframe tighten as a shiver goes down his spine. Could Armand have _really_ planned for all of this to happen? Surely not. Too many people, too many variables. Perhaps he's just lonely enough that he always keeps the place ready for visitors - or perhaps he brings human victims back here, to play with. At any rate, it heightens his instinctive dislike of the house.

"You'll find the wardrobes fully stocked, if you would like to change," Armand says, hands loosely clasped in front of him in a gesture that seems oddly familiar, but Lestat can't quite place it, "I'm afraid I do not have anything that may fit _you_ , mademoiselle," the _mademoiselle_ is wielded sharp and mean, like a dagger between the ribs, "A dressmaker can be called for, if you wish."

Claudia nods, stiffly. Louis adds a quick, "Thank you so much for your kind hospitality," almost apologetically, as if he's a human father covering for his young, somewhat rude daughter. As if the rudeness is accidental. As if she doesn't know any better. It's… bizarre. It feels like they're actors, playing at humanity. The corridor seems to stretch and yawn away from Lestat, and he grips his own arms to try and keep himself grounded. The thirst can do this, sometimes. Make the world twist. Make it all seem distant and alien.

"Let us all meet back here in fifteen minutes, and then we shall go to hunt," Armand says, glancing at his pocketwatch, "You are free to roam anywhere in the house. You are welcome here. Adieu."

_Welcome?_

Lestat realises abruptly exactly what it is that feels so familiar about Armand's behaviour - he's imitating Marius. Lestat thinks back when they'd sat in the tower nearly a century ago and Armand, miserable and bedraggled, had spun his life's story; in his time of need, Marius had arrived and saved him, whisking him away to his luxurious home to provide for his every need. It had been just the same when Marius had found Lestat, and now Armand is getting to perform the role himself.

In a strange way, it completely reduces any menace in Armand. Looking at him, realising this, seeing the way Armand smiles with his mouth closed, calm and benevolent, gestures grand but still slow and controlled, speaking to them with light amusement in his tone as if they are somewhere between honoured guests and wayward children - Marius, it's all Marius. Armand seems nothing more than a little boy playing at being his father.

It raises a strange feeling inside of Lestat. He's not sure what it is. It is the same as what he'd felt when he'd gazed down upon Armand's bloodied face a century ago, pulped by furious fists, and his heart had broken just a little. They are all lost. They are all afraid. They are all so young. Who can really claim to know, or be, anything.

The best they can do is endeavour to carry on.

After a moment, he notices that he's the only one left in the hallway, and shuffles quickly into his room. After flinching away from his own reflection in the wall mirror, he eagerly cleans us as best he can. In the wardrobe he finds a rail of fresh white shirts and cravats, and waistcoats, jackets, and those wider leg trousers that are in fashion now. None of them the tailored finery he prefers, of course, but they fit well enough and they're so much better than the smokey borrowed rags from the theatre.

With his face scrubbed and hair combed, he hesitantly tries the mirror again. He looks… frail, mostly. Not a monster. Just a tired old man.

He lifts a hand to trace the burn scars on his face, then the faded line across his throat. Distant pain. Another life, really. And he should have died.

But he didn't. He's still here.

He starts when he hears Claudia's voice in the hallway, pitched low but harsh with anger. How long had he been staring at his reflection? Hard to tell in this dark house with its shutters and thick curtains. He pushes himself away quickly and peers around the bedroom door.

Claudia is stood, small fists balled; she's evidently done her best to clean herself up, but with her ripped and rumpled soot-blackened dress she still looks like an urchin. Like, Lestat reflects, the night that they found her. Behind her is Louis, watching with an anxious kind of detachment, and Lestat is temporarily distracted by how handsome he looks. Even in his borrowed poorly fitted clothes he radiates his own unique blend of masculine and feminine charm, thin and sharp and fine and strong. But Louis has always had this talent. Louis could make a dirty sackcloth look _chic_.

"What happened to Madeleine?" Claudia demands, "I know that you know, Armand!"

Madeleine? Lestat wonders. He's heard that name before, he's certain, but the memory evades him. Who is Madeleine?

Claudia asked after her at the theatre. Madeleine is dead.

Louis' face creases, and he reaches out a hand to touch Claudia's shoulder, but she roughly shrugs him off and keeps staring down Armand.

He is utterly calm under the force of her glare, "The theatre coven killed her yesterday. They sent her into the fire."

Claudia knew already, but Lestat can see in her face that the confirmation genuinely hurts her. He wonders who the woman could have been, that such news could affect Claudia so. She absorbs it, curling in on herself a little as if taking the force of a blow, and then she holds herself back up straight and her doll face twists accusatorily, "You could have saved her."

"Perhaps," Armand concedes calmly, "But they were hungry for death and would not have allowed the delay in the 'trial' without _some_ form of satiation. Would you rather I let them have you, or Louis?" He waves a hand languidly, dismissively, "Besides, she had the mania. She would not have lasted long. They never do."

When Armand says _mania_ he glances at Lestat in his doorway, and an image flashes in his mind of Nicki, dark hair a disheveled curtain around his face as he pours his very soul into his terrible, haunting music. The mania, the madness that had sprung in his soul through the turning, had consumed Nicki and sent him into the flames. It is a cruel memory to dredge up out of the blue, but oddly Lestat cannot feel any malice behind it. Armand genuinely believes that this mysterious Madeleine's death was for the best.

Lestat shudders and scowls, "It is not up to you to decide."

Louis and Claudia look towards him; the cool unfeeling china doll mask washes back over Claudia's face, but it seems as if the opposite occurs in Louis - he appears furtive and embarrassed, stepping back like he wants to blend into the shadows. How strange. As if Lestat would not be able to spot him there.

"But I _did_ decide and now we are here and safe, so what does it matter?" Armand snaps irritably, doing that dismissive gesture again, "If we are finished then I am going to hunt. There is a village about three miles east, it should be populated enough to sustain us for one night."

The hunt.

Lestat's mind throws off all other thoughts. The thirst tightens his veins, makes his teeth feel sharp against the inside of his lips; it has been so long since he's tasted fresh blood and the need for it claws at his insides. And yet, the exertions of the night have left him so weak that it is taking all of his concentration to stay standing. He is in no condition to hunt tonight.

Armand knows this. His eyes shift over to Lestat, mouth curled slightly. He wants Lestat to admit it.

In a strange turn, it is Claudia who saves him - in a way - by turning to him with the sneering air of someone who has been made vulnerable, so seeks another's weakness to hide it, "We'll bring you something back of course, Lestat. Just think of it as room service."

Lestat retreats back into his room and shortly after he hears the three leave together. Exhaustion has given him a headache, so he stretches out on the bed, closes his eyes, and pretends that he's a young man again, sprawled out with his dogs, drunk and miserable but knowing that if he dozes he'll be woken by the gentle warmth of the sun.

He doesn't intend to slip into mortal sleep, and doesn't realise that he has until he jolts awake at the sound of the front door.

The others are back. And they promised to bring him blood.

He climbs off the bed and arranges himself artfully on the wide windowsill, pulling aside the curtains and cracking the shutters so he looks as if he'd been gazing out of the window, rather than asleep. He knows that they know he's weak, but he has no wish to reinforce the image if he can help it. This has more… dignity.

It's Claudia who glides into the room after three sharp little knocks. She has no one else with her - not Louis or Armand, or some mortal victim, so he waits and watches her, confused.

"Don't look at me so expectantly," she says archly, "Louis offered to find your dinner, and he's not back yet."

Lestat blinks, " _Louis?_ "

"Yes, so you'll probably be getting some hapless animal," her mouth quirks up in a smirk, "Mes condoléances."

Lestat sighs, trying to push down his disappointment, as Claudia glides over to him. There's pink in her dimpled cheeks and she's found herself a new dress; this one is a pale green, with numerous bows and a frilled neckline. It's more infantile than she usually prefers, but he doubts she had too many options at this time of night. She considers the chaise by the window for a few moments, before leaning her back elegantly against the low end. Lestat glances around the room for something that will do as a chair for her height, and spots a footstool, which he nudges towards her with his heel. She declines it with a regal twist of her wrist. She's here with a purpose, then, not to socialise.

"So, what is to happen tomorrow? Do you have a plan?" She asks, and then adds, when he doesn't immediately answer, "Louis will of course leave with Armand."

Louis will leave with Armand… and leave _him_ behind. Again.

Lestat had known all along, of course. The glass had shattered and now things can't go back to how they were before. He tries to imagine it, but the pieces just don't fit anymore; Louis has learnt that he can stand on his own two feet, that he can navigate the world without Lestat's help, that he doesn't have to submit to Lestat's will. Lestat's threats had always been empty, hollow things, and in his current state even Claudia could probably best him for strength.

Lestat closes his eyes briefly and breathes through the pang of loneliness shooting through his chest.

Claudia gives an irritable kind of sigh, "I have no intention of playing third wheel, and at any rate, I doubt the invitation will be extended."

Lestat opens his eyes and offers her a weary smirk, "Louis might offer, out of guilt, but I doubt Armand would appreciate your presence on his victorious honeymoon tour."

"Yes, he does seem to harbour a particular dislike for me," Claudia says with a wry smile.

"I did warn you that there were worse vampires out in the world than I."

"Which brings me to my point," Claudia links her hands behind her back, mimicking Louis' best businessman posture in miniature, "As you are still severely weakened from the fire, and I cannot navigate society without an adult companion, I believe it would be in the best interest of us both to leave Paris together and cohabit, until such a time as you are strong enough to make me a new guardian and we may part ways."

Something stirs in Lestat's mind, "Is that what this mysterious Mademoiselle Madeleine was to you? A guardian? And Armand killed her to trap you?"

Claudia's mouth twitches, face calculatedly blank. Weighing and measuring, he realises, trying to parse out the value of the truth like jeweller bent over a diamond. Oh, how the daughter has learnt from her father. Once again his little lessons have come back to bite him.

"Yes," she says eventually, voice as calm and clear as a bell, "Louis made her for me. His final atonement."

Louis made her. _Louis made her_.

After the shock passes, a strange kind of anger rises up inside of Lestat, and he wants to tear out of the room and run to the town to find Louis and shout _how dare you!_ But… how dare he what? How dare he share the blood? No, that's not it at all…

How dare you do this without _me_. How dare you find it within you to do this glorious and terrible and arrogant act when I'm not there to to be part of the whole delicious mess! He tries to imagine it; a woman, young and beautiful no doubt, to cater to Claudia's tastes and to punish Louis by not catering to _his_.

"Lestat?" Claudia prompts coolly.

The last time she'd called him _father_ had been when she'd slit his throat, but his name still sounds wrong when she uses it that way. It makes him think of his relationship with Gabrielle, and the way, in the last years they were together, she'd curl her lip just a little whenever he slipped up and called her _maman_.

Gabrielle doesn't want to be his mother and Claudia doesn't want to be his daughter, tomorrow Louis will leave him for Armand, and Nicki hated him so much he chose the flames over reconciliation.

Lestat twists his fingers into the blanket and suddenly feels very, very small, and very, very alone.

But Claudia is still there, head cocked to one side, birdlike. Assessing. Waiting. She's not his daughter anymore, but in so many ways, she's more his daughter than ever.

Lestat knows he has been chosen out of pragmatism, not want. Chosen because he is the lesser evil - what is the old saying? Better the devil you know? - but he has been alone and wretched for so long that the idea of a companion stirs that feeling so very vital for vampires: hope. A reason to go on.

"Yes, that is a good idea," he says hoarsely. Though his little Claudia is a cunning imp, so he knows this is unlikely as straightforward as it seems, "I assume you have terms?"

She nods primly, "Things cannot go back to how they were before. You know that. So we will have no more of your silly impotent little threats. You will not treat me like a child - unless we are in society and it is to preserve our charade. And," she narrows her big blue eyes, "You will tell me everything you know about the history of our species."

Lestat closes his eyes again. He'd readied himself for this blow.

"And what if that knowledge comes at a price, ma cocotte? Would you be willing to pay it? You've seen firsthand how dangerous our kind can be."

Genuine anger seems to bubble up from inside Claudia, "Oh, being punished for asking questions? What's new?" She snaps, "Who are you to decide what I can and cannot know?"

"It is not I who decides these things-"

Claudia pounces on the morsel, "Another, then? Some kind of vampire elder?"

The old anxiety over Marius comes rushing back, along with indignation over her accusatory tone, "I keep secrets to keep you safe, _petite_ ; as you have discovered, there are those who would kill you just for your existence, not to mention your murderous history."

"And whose fault are those things!" She bursts out, "Not mine, for I did not ask to be snatched in the night and made a monster, and you never _told_ me the rules apparently so sacred to our kind that they carry a death sentence! Therefore the consequences ought fall on _your_ head, and you owe me the truth!"

He does not have the energy to maintain anger for long, and it fizzles out quickly because what she says is, unfortunately, true. He runs his scarred hands down his scarred face, "And what exactly is it that you would know?" He asks, "I do not think this truth you seek will satisfy you."

"What is it that Armand meant when he talked about Madeleine having 'the mania'? He looked right at you as he said it, so you must know."

Lestat's stomach churns. He will not give her Nicki. He will not. But if he clams up now she will scent weakness, like the little predator she is, and she will never let it drop. He has to give her _something_.

"Sometimes, very young fledglings do not cope well with the turn. I am not sure why it is - perhaps it is to do with how their mind was as a human," he looks away from Claudia, studying the view out of the window. Dawn is only a few hours off. "Whatever it is, it causes the mania. The fledgling's behaviour becomes erratic, frantic, and obsessive, and they no longer have a sense of self-preservation."

He looks back to Claudia; her eyes are distant and she's nodding almost unconsciously.

"Was Madeleine this way?" He prompts.

Claudia's gaze snaps back to him. Her jaw clenches and he watches as she struggles with what to reveal.

"Yes," she says finally, bitterly, "Yes, she… she became obsessed with making me clothes and whole rooms of child-sized furniture. When she hunted, she was like a wolf pup, eager and careless, and she would grow distraught and tear the house apart if we were separated for more than an hour or so," she gives him a slow, sour smile, "Another parent desperate to keep their precious living doll."

Lestat isn't certain how to respond to that, but he is saved from it by the sound of the front door. They both turn towards it instinctively, listening to the barely audible footsteps moving at inhuman speed. Claudia's smile fades and she retreats back into her blank mask.

"Armand was right to kill her," she says coldly, "But he took something that belonged to me, and that I can never forgive."

"But you will relinquish Louis?"

Claudia purses her lips, "Louis made up his mind to leave, and you know how stubborn he can be when he finally makes a decision," she lifts her chin loftily at him, " _I_ do not beg."

Perfectly on cue, there's a knock at the bedroom door. Lestat's hunger surges inside of him like a wolf. Claudia pushes away from the chaise and primly adjusts her dress.

"Your dinner has arrived, it seems. We can discuss our onward plans tomorrow."

She stands on her tiptoes to press a cold, polite kiss to his cheek, and he reflects, as she walks away from him, that the businesslike formality of it cuts more than any words she's said that night.

She opens the door to Louis and the two nod politely at each other, Louis stepping back to allow Claudia through. It's bizarre seeing a relationship that had always been so naturally affectionate now so stilted and frosty. How have they come to this, he and Louis and their daughter? Once, loving her had been the easiest thing in the world.

Louis shuts the door behind him. Lestat's eyes rake over him, but he can find no evidence of a concealed body on his person. Louis has always been fastidious about his manners; likely it is out on a dining table somewhere, plated up, with the correct silverware set out. The mental image makes Lestat's mouth twitch up as he stands to greet Louis, hoping the gesture comes across as more dignified than eager.

"Bonsoir," Louis says coolly. The blood is working in him magnificently, giving him colour high on his sharp cheekbones, in his lips. It's all Lestat can do to refrain from salivating.

"Bonsoir. Good hunt?"

Louis would have reacted to that, once. He would have glowered, or closed his eyes in silent pain, or at least pinched his lips together in disapproval. Now, Louis simply exhales, then fixes Lestat with a look that says, _Are you finished?_

Lestat feels off-kilter, and the room wobbles a little around him. What is he supposed to do, if he can't provoke Louis? This is their whole dynamic, this constant push-pull - Lestat provokes Louis, Louis provokes him right back. It's not what Lestat wants, but Louis' rage is so much better than his indifference. It's juvenile, but it's _attention_.

God, Lestat is hungry.

"Armand and I are leaving," Louis says without preamble, holding eye contact as if to dare Lestat to protest, "At first dark tomorrow. We're travelling around the continent," he smiles dryly, "You could call it a _Grand Tour_ , I suppose."

Travel? Is that what it took to win over Louis' heart? All of those years of bitterness and the answer was that simple? _I would have taken you anywhere, if it meant you loved me_ , he wants to cry, but even as the thought occurs to him he knows that it's a lie. The Lestat who had presided over the Rue Royale apartment had been so terrified of losing his precious fledglings that he'd have rather bricked them up inside the flat than let them explore the world.

It's incredible how easy it is, now, to look back and see what a terrible choice that was. Now he's lost them he knows exactly what he'd sacrifice to have them back, and complete control is a meagre price.

Louis waits, staring at him. Lestat realises that this is the ransom for his dinner; if he responds in a manner Louis dislikes, tries to force him to stay, then Louis will simply not give him the blood, and leave him too weak to intervene. How cunning. Lestat feels the familiar exhaustion wash over him, and moves to sit on the bed. It means he has to look up at Louis, but it's far better than his legs buckling.

"I see," says Lestat eventually, trying to keep his voice disinterested, "Well, I recommend branching out to Egypt, it's very nice this time of year. Good beaches."

Louis' jaw twitches, his narrowed eyes fixed on Lestat's face, watching like a hawk for any sign of an unfavourable reaction. After several moments he asks, "What will you do? Is there… somewhere you can go?"

"Funny you should ask," Lestat says, trying to sound nonchalant, "Claudia was actually just in here to forge a truce, of sorts. Seems we're both in need of each other, so we'll be travelling on together."

Louis' face cycles through surprise, confusion, and then relief. It must soothe his guilt over leaving her, knowing she will have another parent ready to step in. And how terrible must his guilt be, if it drove him to go as far as creating a _fledgling_ to appease it? Lestat has a vague notion that he could use this as a bargaining chip, somehow, but he can't force his mind to focus enough with the hunger gnawing at him.

Louis blinks a few times, as if rearranging the world inside of his head, then says, "Well," and, "Good," as if he's not certain what else to say. And then he shakes his head and seems to come back to himself, "If you are travelling with Claudia then you'll need-" he reaches into his jacket, towards the inside pocket where he always kept money, before frowning when he remembers that it's borrowed and empty, "Ah, I left my pocketbook back in the hotel suite, but I've had our things sent for, so when Claudia's affects arrive tomorrow I can write-"

"I don't need your money," Lestat says quickly, vaguely offended. He's never shrunk from taking Louis' money before, but now they're going their separate ways, it seems… well, he's not certain what, but if Louis is going to make a _statement_ about asserting his independence, then Lestat can absolutely match that nonsense, "That is... I have the resources to keep her in the manner she is accustomed to."

Louis raises a sceptical eyebrow, "Lestat, I'm not certain you quite appreciate the cost of the lifestyle you prefer - one victim's stolen riches will hardly sustain you for long."

"I have more than enough to keep us, thank you. You may have believed me a miserable pauper all this time, but I'll have you know I'm from a noble line. I have a very sizeable inheritance waiting for me in a french bank."

Louis thinks it's a lie at first. Lestat has spun enough tall tales about his origin over the course of their time together that it's not entirely surprising - but after a few moments of Lestat holding determined eye contact, Louis is once again shocked. His eyes go wide, and then his eyebrows furrow in that way Lestat has spent seven decades admiring.

"You've… you've been wealthy this whole time?" He asks, low voice cracking uncharacteristically - and Lestat feels abruptly out of his depth, because Louis' voice only does that when he's emotional, and - and what could _possibly_ have made him emotional about this?

Lestat nods, and something just… collapses behind Louis' eyes. He runs a hand through his hair, exhaling shakily, and then he whispers, "I don't understand," before clearing his throat and repeating, louder, "I don't _understand_. Why… what possible reason could you have had to choose me, if it wasn't for my money? If it wasn't for the plantation?"

Louis looks so bewildered, so lost, that Lestat suddenly has the reckless urge to tell Louis everything - his whole history, his life, his death. _Unclasp to thee the book, even of my secret soul._ His heart thuds.

"Louis..." Lestat says softly, "Louis, surely you must know."

Louis stares at him, eyes bright with anguish and pleading.

Lestat wants to say, _because you're clever and kind_ , wants to say _because you were so lovely and so lonely that I couldn't resist_ , wants to say _because I read your mind and I knew that if you'd been there, you would have cried at the Witches' Place, too, that you would have understood_.

But it's too much - that terrible pain in Louis' eyes, and the way his chest feels like it's going to burst, and his head is spinning with the thirst - so he tightens his fingers in the counterpane and turns away and says instead, "Have I passed your test, then, monsieur? May you lead me to my dinner now?"

Louis deflates. He sinks down onto the bed beside Lestat, looking still lost but also equal parts disappointed and relieved. He shakes his head, a graceful little motion that Lestat knows means that Louis is trying to pull himself together, then takes a deep breath, and sits up properly.

“ _Lead_ you to your dinner?” Louis says, softly but incredulously, “Lestat, you- you didn't seriously believe that I would drag some poor soul back here to the house?”

Lestat blinks, “Well, I don’t see what the other options could be…”

“I have fed twice tonight, you can drink from me,” Louis says firmly, businesslike, and when Lestat gapes, Louis gets an odd, pinch-lipped expression, “My blood may be weak, but it will be more restorative than a human's, I think - and you'll need to be stronger if you are to be Claudia's guardian. If the theatre vampires find you you'll never be able to protect her in this state.”

 _The way you couldn’t protect her, you mean?_ Lestat wants to say, but his mind is still reeling from the prospect of drinking from Louis, from Louis _offering_ this deeply intimate gesture - not in the hypothetical way he had in the theatre, but _here_ and _now_ \- and he’s so afraid to provoke Louis into retracting the offer that he manages to swallow the jibe.

And then Louis is talking again-

“I- I know I would not be your first choice…” he says, trailing off. Lestat stares blankly at him.

"What are you talking about?"

Louis' jaw clenches, "Armand told me you entreated _him_ for blood," and then before Lestat can respond he carries on quickly, like he's embarrassed, "It's alright, I know you two have - well, a _past_ , and you've known each other so long, and mine may not be what you want, but it's my responsibility as I was the one who-"

"Louis," Lestat cuts in sharply, bewildered, “What is this nonsense? Saying that I chose you for your money, that I don't want your blood? You know that there is no one else I…”

Lestat swallows, suddenly feeling the full weight of Louis’ eyes on him, “I mean… that I want you, Louis, because you're _you_. Not for your money.”

The emotional turmoil on Louis’ face seems to flare, and then abruptly disappear, as if a curtain comes down to hide it, and then Louis is utterly wooden. It is his turn to swallow, and then he says, quietly, as if he’s in pain, “Why could you not have said these things years ago, before everything went to hell? They would have meant so much to me then.”

“They mean nothing to you now?” Lestat asks desperately. He wants to say _I love you_ , it is on the tip of his tongue, stuck in his throat, so he clears it, but the words still won’t come out, “You must know what I… how I…”

Louis watches him flounder. His eyes are cold.

“Manipulating me now will not convince me to stay - I have made up my mind, Lestat,” he says, drawing himself together with an icy kind of dignity. And then he raises his hands to begin unwinding his cravat, and Lestat’s mouth goes dry, “Come, let's get this over with. The excess of blood is making me nauseous."

As Louis tugs his collar aside and sweeps his hair back, exposing the pale expanse of his neck, Lestat's pulse begins to thunder in his ears, and all other concerns disappear, so vicious is his need. He shuffles along the bed so their knees and thighs touch and trails a hand slowly up Louis' arm to rest at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Despite how hungry he is, and he is literally _starving_ , Lestat desperately wants to savour this. He wants to make it feel good for Louis too - he wants Louis to lie in his coffin just before dawn, months from now, fingers pressed to his jugular, feeling flushed and oddly guilty as he plays the memory over in his mind.

Lestat can feel Louis' pulse racing under his fingers, belying his calm exterior. He leans in and presses his lips gently against the skin of Louis' neck in a chaste kiss, enjoying the gooseflesh that raises there at the touch. There's no way to really prepare a recipient for the bite, but Lestat does his best to drive his fangs in cleanly and quickly to avoid pain. Louis makes a choking kind of sound and fists his long fingers in Lestat's hair, but the sensations are immediately distant because the blood, the blood, the blood.

He wants to weep. He wants to scream. It's too much and not enough at the same time. Lestat is floating, full and yet never satiated, his mind wild and spiraling with one thought: the blood, the blood, the _blood_.

It spills hot onto his tongue and he feels it coursing like lightning through his aching veins, feels it knitting him back together, feels his strength start to return, and then the swoon takes him fully and stars burst behind his eyelids and he feels nothing but heat and ecstasy and maybe just a hint of Louis in there somewhere, the taste of his melancholy and his big heart and his green eyes.

He soars. It could last minutes or hours.

And then slowly, slowly, the world returns.

Somebody makes a low moaning sound and it could be him, but as he comes down from the swoon he's still not entirely connected to his body, so he's not sure. The first sensation he registers is Louis' hands gripping him; one in tangled in his hair, the other clamped around his shoulder. He anchors himself on those two points of pressure as the dizziness recedes and he carefully retracts his fangs. He kisses the spot again as the puncture points heal over. Louis shudders, but Lestat doesn't think it's a bad sign.

After so long starving, the blood of another vampire leaves him feeling revitalised, but the swoon is so overwhelming that he's drowsy and spinning in its wake. He lets his head drop so that his forehead rests against Louis' shoulder, and a thrill runs through him when Louis doesn't pull away, just shifts his weight and moves his hands to support them both.

 _I love you_ , Lestat thinks, squeezing his eyes shut, _I love you I love you I love you_. But even here he still can't say it.

What he does manage to say - what comes out in a hoarse whisper after several minutes - is, “You’re different now.”

Louis doesn’t respond for a while, but when he does, his voice is similarly hushed, as if he’s revealing a secret, “I think so too. I was thinking about it earlier, in the carriage.”

He sits back, easing Lestat off him; whilst Lestat’s heart nearly breaks at losing the physical contact, it’s such a slow and gentle movement - and Louis’ thumbs stroke over his shoulders once, twice, before he pulls away - that it can hardly be called a rejection. The iciness from before is totally gone, replaced by that dreamy distant expression that characterises Louis’ periods of thought so intense that it’s as if he’s left his whole body behind. It’s the kind of expression that precedes a vague and philosophical verbal exploration, so Lestat leans back on his hands and waits.

Louis needs this, sometimes, Lestat knows. When he's fixated on something he likes to have someone to talk it through with - or rather, _at_ , as he requires very little input. Something about the act of speaking the words outloud seems to make them slot themselves into the correct order in his mind, and he can go on these rambly little tangents for hours, if his audience allows. In the past, Claudia had been the usual target, as Lestat preferred his conversations less dreary and more participatory and had made it a point to say so.

Despite that, there _had_ been nights where the moon had shone just so, and the cadence of Louis' voice had been so low and sweetly ponderous and he'd been too caught up in his musings to be self-conscious, where Lestat had gazed at Louis, felt the blood singing and drawing them together, felt the aching burden of love in his chest, and thought, _I could listen to this man for eternity_. And he'd sat there for hours in enraptured silence.

But they were few and far between.

Lestat feels… strangely guilty about that. It's so easy to be patient with Louis now, so easy to wait, so easy to see all the irritating habits that drove him to fury back then as merely endearing quirks. Louis blinks, shakes his head a little as he returns to himself, and then hesitates, clearly anticipating a scathing shut down, so Lestat nods encouragingly.

"I was so… so mired in agony, before this. The grief over losing Claudia - how our relationship was falling apart and I couldn't hold us together. She was a stranger to me, things hadn't been _right_ between us for a long time and she was so furious with me about Armand, it was like a suffocating fog drowning me… but now, it's as if a veil has been lifted. I've stepped out into the open air and I can think clearly again..."

Louis trails off awkwardly, his gaze on Lestat imploring. Lestat shifts, unsure of what Louis wants. He shrugs, "You faced down a threat and defeated it. It's given you confidence. A little jeopardy and violence is good for the soul."

Louis swallows and presses his fingertips firmly against his lips, eyes darting away and back. Lestat knows without even really thinking about it that this means Louis wants to say something but cannot find the words; he is briefly overwhelmed with an odd, aching feeling radiating from the realisation of how _well_ he knows this man.

"It's more than that, though. You see, I met Santiago when I went in to set the blaze," Louis says finally, then looks down at his hands, expression twisted, "I, ah, I cut him. With a scythe. One of their morbid theatre props."

Lestat's eyes narrow as he tries to imagine it, "What do you mean, you cut him?"

Louis clears his throat, then does one of his graceful little shrugs, "Well, I… I beheaded him."

Lestat's mouth drops open. In the seven decades they've cohabited he and Louis came to blows on several occasions, so he knows that for all his tendency towards passivity, the man is more than adequate at physically defending himself, but _this_? The ruthlessness, the _precision_ … and with a _scythe?_ Dear god. Something hot shoots through Lestat at the thought, the same burning attraction that had flared when Louis had ripped the lock from the cell door.

Louis, opposite him, straightens his cuffs and tucks his hair behind his ears - it’s a ridiculous gesture when his collar still lies open, cravat untied, the tiny pink pinpricks still just visible on his neck, but it’s very bourgeois to neaten himself as a nervous tell. Very _Louis_. And when Lestat looks at him, _really_ looks at him, he's surprised to find that Louis doesn't look guilty. There's a hint of it, in the anxious set of his eyebrows, but lord knows Lestat has seen what guilt looks like on Louis, and this? This isn't it. His expression is awkward and self-conscious above all else, though his jaw is clenched in some kind of pre-emptive defiance.

Perhaps, a thought dawns slowly, the smidgen of guilt is because… Louis _doesn't_ feel guilty, and he thinks he ought to. Yes, that's why he confessed this to Lestat, who he knows would never disapprove of such violence, who he knows would actively _approve_ of such violence. And- oh. Louis wants to be mocked until he can feel indignant and righteous in his self-loathing again, retreat into that dark but familiar well where he doesn't need to feel bad for leaving.

Acidic bitterness burns in Lestat's chest, but it's a weary thing. Why must he play the villain? He initiated the role, he can admit, but after so many years apart, and in this _place_ … he doesn't want it. He wants to be Lelio the lover again. He wants Louis to take him in his arms, and then feel the weight of how empty they are when he drives away with Armand. He wants Louis to _miss_ him.

"The beheading likely didn’t kill him, Louis," Lestat says finally, reaching out to touch Louis' hand, "He would have died in the fire, with the others.”

Louis stares down at their hands, “And I was the one who set the fire,” he says softly.

“You cannot honestly tell me that you’re sorry they’re dead?” Lestat asks, scoffing.

“No, not at all,” Louis admits, “But… I _ought_ to be. They were people, after all,” he tilts his head back and his gaze goes distant as he stares at the ceiling, “I think that perhaps turning Madeleine cost me the last of my humanity. I think that's why I'm different now.”

 _Madeleine_. The strange anger surges in Lestat again, just as when Claudia spoke of her. He wants… he’s not sure what he wants, but he’s sick of this strange dance they’re doing around the subject. He wants to hurt Louis in some small way through forcing him into honesty, forcing him to admit he did this thing he swore he never would. Lestat waits until Louis sighs and lowers his gaze again, before asking, “Who was Madeleine to you, Louis?”

“Don’t speak of that to me,” Louis says sharply, cutting a glare at Lestat and snatching his hand away, and then, after a few moments of silence, he drops his eyes and whispers, “I hardly knew her. Claudia brought her to me, demanded… revenge, I suppose. A new guardian.”

“So you made a fledgling.”

“I had no _choice_ ,” his voice breaks and he clenches his hands into fists on his thighs.

As usual, Lestat’s anger burns out quickly. Part of him aches to comfort Louis, but the better part of him is still feeling stung, so he compromises and changes the subject.

“Armand isn’t all he seems. He’s more and… he’s so much less,” Lestat looks at Louis out of the corner of his eyes, hoping Louis understands, hoping Armand isn’t listening in, “Tell me you know that.”

Louis reacts in a way that Lestat doesn’t expect: he snorts.

"I may be a weak, cowardly, pathetic excuse for a vampire, but I do know my own mind, and I can recognise when he is trying to creep into it. Do not fear that he will take me over. I will not let him," he tilts his head towards Lestat and gives him a sour kind of smile, "A man once told me that I’m terribly stubborn."

Him. Louis is talking about him. He'd meant it as an insult at the time, when he'd spat it, but he can see now that it's also a strength. When he cares to, Louis has a talent for planting his feet and refusing to move for even the most violent of storms. Hopefully it will keep him upright through Armand's buffeting.

But it's still _Armand_. Louis is leaving him to be with _Armand_ and it hurts, in a petulant kind of way. Enough that he can't quite look Louis in the eye.

“You know these things but you still want to leave with him?” Lestat asks, the sulky tone in his voice evident even to him.

In his peripherals, Lestat sees Louis' smile instantly vanish, "Oh, as if you can cast the first stone, Lestat!" He snaps, "Armand is… well, he’s hardly a saint, I know that. But he’s something new, and different, and he doesn’t want to… hold me in one place forever," he purses his lips, "Armand wants to learn and grow, and so do I. And I think, for now, that is enough."

Lestat sets his jaw, "And what about when it’s not enough?"

Louis exhales a ragged, angry sigh. It sounds… raw. Lestat glances at him and is startled to see Louis looking back, eyes flinty.

"Do not ask me to stay," Louis growls, "You know things cannot go back to how they were - and frankly, I won’t let them."

"That’s not what I’m doing! I just…" Lestat swallows and has to look away again. The feelings are too much, too big, "I want to know that I'll see you again. I don't need to know when, just… someday. Promise me."

Louis doesn't say anything for a while. Lestat stares down at his hands in his lap and fights down the urge to run, or maybe scream - anything to release this tension in his chest. He feels flayed open and his heart is in Louis' hands. He hates it.

Louis sighs again. It's still ragged, but it doesn't sound angry anymore

"I can't promise that," he whispers.

"Please," Lestat blurts, and the feeling of tears pricking at his eyes is so humiliating but he's been so desperately lonely for so long that now he's started letting the words out he can't stop them, "I'll- I'll tell you everything. Anything you want to know. Just say you'll come and find me again, one day."

 _No!_ A distant part of his mind protests, _What about Marius? What about what he said?_

Hang Marius and his threats! All his stupid rules ever brought was misery. Misery and death. To his humiliation, Lestat feels the tears begin to spill over. He turns away to hide his face, covering his eyes with a hand.

"We can talk the way you always wanted to," he promises. It's his final offering, the only thing he has left that Louis might possibly want.

Again, it takes Louis a long time to reply. He always likes to think things through, say what he really means. Lestat wipes as his cheeks with the heel of his hand and grinds his teeth as he stares at the corner of the rug, stewing in his humiliation.

And then he feels Louis' fingers close around the hand in his lap. He looks around sharply and Louis is watching him, cautiously but not unkindly, like Lestat's a dog that might bite if startled.

"If you really mean that," Louis says softly, "Then… then write to me."

Lestat blinks, "Write to you?"

"Yes - I have an attorny, I'll leave you his address and he'll pass your letters on to me," Louis picks up speed and confidence with his idea, a hesitant smile dawning on his pale face, "You can send me news of Claudia, and- and newspaper cuttings, or playbills, or daguerrotypes - or whatever else takes your fancy. Write to me, and tell me your story. Let's talk, and maybe…" Louis swallows heavily as he pauses, as if shoring himself up against some inner pain, "Maybe someday we can _understand_ each other."

Lestat stares at Louis, and wishes again, desperately, agonisingly, that their minds could touch. Could it be possible that they could bridge this decades-long gap between them with a solution as simple as writing letters?

He wants to believe it.

"Alright," Lestat says, "I'll write to you."

He's rewarded with a small, pleased smile. Louis squeezes his hand lightly, "I can't promise that I'll come back to you. But I can promise that if you write to me - if you _talk_ to me - then I will always write back."

"Then I suppose that will have to be enough," Lestat mutters.

Louis smiles again and shakes his head, but there's a fondness in it now. He stands up from the bed and straightens his waistcoat and jacket, before remembering the loose cravat slung around his neck and stepping over to the mirror to set his collar to rights once again. When he's finished, he turns back to look at Lestat on the bed, and pauses. Suddenly seeing Louis all put back together in front of him makes the whole night seem like a bizarre dream - the cell, the fire, the carriage, the _blood_. And here, at the end of it, Louis is about to walk out of the bedroom and out of his life, and Lestat has no idea what to say. It should be something suave, or witty, or clever, but his mind is utterly blank.

 _I do not beg,_ he remembers Claudia sneering. Well, he can manage that. He tries to smile politely. Be a gracious loser. God, he's never been much good at that.

Abruptly, Louis is standing in front of him - he'd moved so fast Lestat had barely seen, he'd used his _vampire_ speed, and Lestat barely has time to register his heart pounding before Louis is kissing him. It's not a nice kiss, it's bruising and desperate and full of frustration, and with Louis bent over him Lestat is forced to crane his head back to meet him. It takes a second for Lestat to notice, but as the taste of iron meets his tongue he realises Louis crashing their mouths together had made Lestat cut his own lip on his incisor. His mind zeros in on the blood, his world shrinking to that pinpoint of taste, and he feels Louis freeze against him as he tastes it too.

And then Lestat is mouthing at air. Louis is two steps away and staring, eyes wide and pupils blown, a smudge of red on his bottom lip. He darts his tongue out to lick it away, and Lestat sees his fangs lengthen, sees the hunger in his face, sees him lean back in, and gasps as he imagines Louis pushing him down, pinning him, bloodying both their mouths with ferocious kisses, tearing off their ill-fitting borrowed clothes, taking whatever he wants, and Lestat would give him anything, everything.

His eyes flutter shut as Louis presses a hand to his cheek, but what he receives is a gentle, chaste kiss, and then Louis rests their foreheads together, whispers "Bonsoir, Lestat," and-

And then he's gone. And Lestat is left, panting for breath he doesn't need, as the bedroom door swings gently shut.

It's close to half an hour before Lestat can bring himself to do more than stare dazedly at the wall, and that's only to drag himself over to the mirror to stare dazedly at that. He still looks tired and old, but the infusion of blood has faded his patchwork of scars somewhat, and brought the barest hint of colour to his hollowed out cheeks. He brings his fingers to his mouth and touches the slowly healing cut.

Real, then. He's had so many hallucinations since the fire, in his starving madness, and this one had been so-

Real. It had been real, he tells himself.

Dawn can't be more than an hour off, and he can feel it tugging at him, but he just- he needs to get out of these four walls. He needs to walk around a bit, try and think. Try and figure out what to do next.

The house is cold and dark and quiet, and _empty_ , and he makes his footsteps loud and human just to hear some kind of sound. He wanders from room to room, trailing his fingers over the panelling, over the couches, over the golden gilt frames of the ugly paintings.

He doesn't know what he's looking for until he comes to the end of a dark corridor and finds the old wooden door.

He doesn't need to open it to know where it leads; like a homing pigeon returning to roost, he knows somehow, in his bones, that he is near the place where he met his mortal end and was dragged unwillingly into immortality. He wonders if Gabrielle feels the same about Paris, and if Louis always knows the direction of the remains of Pointe du Lac, or if Armand could travel blindfolded back to Venice.

He lifts his hand and presses it flat against the gnarled wood. It's the same door that had barred the entrance to the tower all those years ago, sheltered now from the elements in the bowels of this dark house. Lestat wonders why Armand didn't have it replaced. Perhaps he didn't want it hidden.

He imagines walking through the door, climbing the stairs, passing the scorch marks on the flagstones, wriggling through the crawlspace and finding that hidden room where he'd fled from the sun and slept his first day. Would it bring him comfort, or more horror? He's not certain.

_I thought I might find you here._

In the strange silence of the house, Armand's voice echoes so loudly in his head that he flinches, spinning around to find him standing calmly at the other end of the corridor.

The shock quickly gives way to anger; he focuses on Armand's presence in his mind and _pushes_ , the way he did in the theatre. He feels the invasion retreat.

"Alright," Armand says, in that quiet, lightly amused voice. Marius' voice. Lestat wonders if he even realises he's mimicking his master, or if it's just instinctive.

"What do you want?" Lestat asks, and if Armand thinks anything about the way his voice cracks, he doesn't react.

Armand says, "I want to talk to you. But not here," and then turns and walks away. Lestat considers standing ground out of spite, but dawn is near and he's honestly curious about what Armand might say.

Armand leads him along the corridor, around several corners, and into a passage Lestat hasn't explored. There are no doors along it, but it does have a large carved windowseat with its protective shutters thrown open. Outside, Paris glitters on the horizon as the sky begins to lighten with the approaching dawn. Armand sits and gestures for Lestat to take the place beside him.

Lestat… hesitates.

Armand waits for a few moments, and then rolls his eyes and reaches around to close the shutters with a resounding clack, plunging the space into gloom. He raises his eyebrows, as if to say, _happy now?_

Lestat sets his jaw, "Can you blame me for wondering if I'm in danger?"

"You're not in danger," Armand says flatly, "Not from me, at any rate. I did consider destroying you after you abandoned me with your _baggage_ -"

Another burst of anger surges through Lestat's body like a spark following gunpowder, "You do not get to call him that!" He snarls, "You- you-"

"Actually," Armand cuts in cooly, "Nicolas referred to _himself_ as that. I was merely quoting."

Lestat is staggered, his anger immediately doused with pain. Nearly a hundred years and Nicki's hate is still a raw and ragged wound in his heart. He wonders how long it'll take to heal over. If it ever will. Aching, Lestat slumps into the spare place on the windowseat and puts his head in his hands. He feels the weight of Armand's stare on his back.

"Anyway, this is a more interesting development," Armand continues breezily, as if Lestat isn't there, trying not to sob, beside him, "Besides, I suspect Louis wouldn't be pleased if I pushed you out of the window and let you burn up in the sunrise - not after he's obviously gone to the trouble of giving you the blood."

Behind his hands, Lestat feels that very blood heat his face. It's a silly mortal impulse to be embarrassed by the evidence of intimacy, as if his healing scars can be compared to a love bite, or rumpled bedsheets, but just like a mortal, under the embarrassment is a flush of pride.

And then Armand asks, "Whatever did you do to persuade him?" And the pride deflates.

Lestat's head snaps up, "Louis _offered_ ," he growls. He's not certain why the distinction is important, but it is.

He may be a monster, but he's not _that_ sort of monster.

All Armand responds to that is a non-committal hum and a vaguely skeptical expression. Lestat is briefly tempted to throw the memory out to him - Louis unwinding his cravat, letting his collar fall open, sweeping his hair aside, baring his neck - however his exhibitionist urges are curbed, and instead he curls himself around the moment to protect it from Armand's prying claws. It's too precious to be shared. Too… vulnerable. And after Armand using his own memories against him in the theatre, twisting and warping them, Lestat doesn't want him to have this one.

"Why do you care about what Louis thinks if you're just manipulating him?" Lestat asks sullenly after a few moments, glancing at Armand out of the corner of his eyes, "You can just reach into his mind and change it."

"Change his mind?" Armand cocks his head to the side, and appears to be genuinely confused, "I want to learn from him, what on earth would be the point in me controlling what he thinks?"

"But you've been manipulating him this whole time. Even he's aware of it."

Armand shakes his head, "No, not at all. You see, Louis is actually very good at making decisions; most of the time he knows exactly what he will do within just a short while of being presented with a choice. It is just that he gets lost, in thinking about consequences and morality and his anxieties, and then he must spend an awfully long time considering such things, before always ultimately proceeding with his first impulse. All I have done is… help speed this process along. All I wanted to do was remove his uncertainties."

When Lestat just stares at him, Armand adds, "He's not done anything that he wouldn't have anyway, eventually."

Something turns in Lestat's stomach at this explanation, but he knows he would be lying if he said he'd never wished to have the power to influence Louis' mind in such a way, denied to him by shared blood. Is it better to have kept him through threats, or trickery? Are he and Armand ultimately just a housecat and a hawk, fighting over who gets the mouse?

_Louis isn't a mouse. He's stronger than that. That's why you want him. That's why I want him. He's stronger than both of us._

Lestat does the push with his mind, this time more violently - and shoves Armand physically too, for good measure.

"I told you to stop that," he growls.

Armand huffs, smoothing the wrinkles in his shirt from where Lestat's hand made contact, "Apologies," he says, drawing the word out sarcastically, "But you were thinking very _loudly_."

Silence stretches between them. Lestat can feel the call of the dawn, the heaviness growing in his limbs and mind, and judging by the way Armand tips his head back to rest against the shutters, he can feel it too. But it's a stalemate, now, and leaving means retreating, so Lestat will stand his ground. Even if it means falling into the deathsleep right here on the windowseat. He's pretty sure that he has the advantage over Armand's age with Akasha's blood, anyway.

Maybe it's petty, but Armand's humiliated him enough in the last 48 hours to last him a very long lifetime.

"You don't deserve Louis," Lestat says, after several minutes of clenching his fists around the lip of the seat and trying to hold in his simmering anger. He's just not made for the cold shoulder.

Armand scoffs, "And you do? I've been inside his mind, I've seen his memories of you. How you kept him and Claudia like birds in a cage. You were a tyrant to them," Lestat opens his mouth to protest, turning around just in time to see Armand's lip curl as he says, "I guess the apple didn't fall too far from the tree."

Lestat stares at him, "... _What?_ "

Armand raises his eyebrows, little cherub face so composed and condescending, "You left Nicki with me, remember? He told me a lot about what life was like in Auvergne," something cold shoots through Lestat as he realises- "He couldn't stop talking about it, and what he didn't talk about I could glean from his mind. It explains a lot about Gabrielle, but it explains more about _you_ …"

Lestat grits his teeth. And here it is, the other side of Armand that he knew would surface once he'd gotten bored of playing that polite host persona. Well, two can play at that game.

"Yes, well, speaking of fathers and lovers - _Marius_ sends his regards. You've been reminding me an awful lot of him this evening, actually," Lestat crows, smirking even as the bitterness crawls up his throat. Armand says nothing, but his expression goes wooden, "Don't you want to know where he is? What he's doing?"

Armand closes his eyes briefly, and the harder Lestat tries to savour to this triumph, the more it sours.

"I know," Armand says, eventually, softly, "I read it from your mind when you first arrived," and then, softer, "He does not send his regards."

Lestat turns away and back to the wall opposite them, jaw clenched. Somehow, the dull look in Armand's eyes has backfired and wound up hurting _him_. How did this always happen with them? He and Armand snipe and tear gaping wounds into each other for no reason other than the fact that they _can_ , until they're both miserable and regretting the whole business.

"No, he does not," Lestat admits.

They sit in silence. Dawn can't be more than half an hour away, and it pulls at them both, dampening the pain and anger. Lestat yawns. Armand pulls his legs up onto the seat so that his chin rests on his knees.

"What will you do now?" Armand asks quietly.

Lestat runs a hand through his hair then yawns again, "When I wake up, the first thing I'm going to do is fix myself a hot bath. And then I'm going to access my account in Paris, speak to my lawyers - as my own grandson, I suppose?" He grins, "And _then_ Claudia and I are going to go on the most _monumental_ shopping trip the city has ever seen… and after that…" Lestat pauses as he genuinely stops to think about it, "Well, I suppose I might try to find Gabrielle."

Armand hums thoughtfully, "I could help you there."

Lestat blinks, turning to him, "You know where she is?"

"No, but I know someone who might - I still hear from Eleni, from time to time-"

"Eleni is well?" Lestat blurts excitedly, "When she wasn't at the theatre, I thought…"

The fire. It sits between them, a heavy thing. Armand dispels it with a shake of his head.

"She left the coven many decades ago, and is well, as far as I know. And it turns out that she has a particular talent for finding our kind," Armand glances up Lestat through his eyelashes, "I can put you in touch with her, if you like."

"And what will that cost me?" Lestat asks, warily. He doesn't trust Armand. How can he, after- _everything?_

Armand says nothing for a few moments. Lestat isn't sure if he's trying to decide on a price, or knows and is just trying to put Lestat on edge.

"A truce," he says, finally.

Lestat stares at him, blankly, "A truce?" He repeats. Armand nods, utterly impassive.

It feels like some sort of scheme, a trap, and instinctively Lestat wants to refuse, but he has so few allies amongst their kind, and he does want to find Gabrielle. With the maker-fledgling silence, it could take centuries to scour the globe for her, but with Armand and Eleni also searching, reaching out their minds for her, it might just be possible. And the idea of not having Armand as a threat… it's appealing, especially as he's so much weaker at the moment. If Armand were to hurt Louis just out of spite, or deliver Claudia back to any who might have survived the theatre fire, Lestat wouldn't be able to protect them.

With all their history Lestat isn't certain if they can ever be _friends_ , but the idea of not being enemies is something Lestat can appreciate.

Lestat narrows his eyes, "Are you influencing my mind right now?"

Armand gives him a flat look.

"No, you're just experiencing what a good idea feels like for the first time."

A startled laugh bursts out of Lestat before he can stop it. It turns a little hysterical, what with the exhaustion and the dawn so close, but it lifts a weight from his shoulders that he hadn't even noticed was there. Armand squints at him until he quiets, though Lestat does notice the corners of his mouth turning up a little.

"Alright," Lestat says through a chuckle, sucking in a breath to calm himself, "What does a truce entail?"

"Nothing unreasonable - I won't touch what's yours if you don't touch what's mine, and we trade in favours."

"And what if this is all some ruse, and you stab me right in the back?"

Armand grins, and even in the dim light, his teeth glint, "Then you get the satisfaction of Louis knowing you had the moral high ground."

Small comfort. Lestat rubs his eyes. God, but he's tired. Smart of Armand to do this when he doesn't have the energy to negotiate.

"Alright," says Lestat, holding out a hand, "Let's call a truce."

Armand takes his hand and they shake. Armand's palm is cool and smooth, and he doesn't try to crush Lestat's fingers like he half expects. Maybe this truce is for real.

When they release their handshake Armand stands, straightening his waistcoat, and Lestat feels relief flood him that their unspoken stalemate has been broken, and he won't have to stubbornly strain to keep his eyes open just to win. He stands up too, because he doesn't much like the idea of looking up at Armand. Not after the last few days.

Armand takes a few paces backwards, then pauses, considering Lestat like he's a fascinating scientific specimen, "Are you really going to let him go?"

Lestat lifts his chin, trying for dignity, "Yes," he says, and then he remembers Claudia's response when he'd directed the question at her, "He's decided to leave. I'm not going to beg."

"You still want him, but you're letting him go," Armand muses, "And you saved Claudia, despite the fact that she tried to kill you? This isn't what I thought you'd do. You've surprised me."

Lestat laughs wearily, "Is that a good thing?"

Armand gives him a very small smile, and something about it makes warmth spread in Lestat's chest. Perhaps it's the new truce, or perhaps it's just that this smile looks _genuine_.

"We all have to find things worth continuing for," Armand says softly, and then, "Au revoir, Lestat," before he slips away into the shadows.

Lestat stays where he is for just a moment. He listens to the quiet noises of the house; the wood settling, the wind against its walls, the ticking of the clocks. He reaches out with his vampire senses, pours his awareness down the corridors, and feels the presence of Claudia in one bedroom, and Louis in the one next door. Their thoughts are closed to him but he can feel their energy, their life forces, like two little candles in the dark. Armand is a vague shape just along the hall that doesn't so much push him away as let the power glance off his mind without really touching it. Lestat reels his awareness back in to just himself, then turns to the window and opens the shutters just a crack.

The sky is the purple of approaching dawn, and under it sits the distant sprawl of Paris. He imagines himself a mortal man, taking a horse from Armand's stables and riding out to meet the sun, how the warmth of the morning light would feel on his skin, how he could eat and drink and go to bed with beautiful people and one day, die. Something clenches inside of him and he tightens his fingers on the shutter.

But he's not a mortal man. And tomorrow Louis will leave him with Armand and made no promises to ever see him again.

And tomorrow he will take a bath in hot water to wash away years of grime and pain and hunger. Tomorrow he and Claudia will go to the city and pick up his money, then spend hours being fitted and tailored in the latest fashions, they will walk the streets among the humans and decide how to leave this place behind them.

Tomorrow they will make plans for their future.

Lestat closes the shutter, walks back to his bedroom, and lets the arrival of the day pull him under into the deathsleep.

-

EPILOGUE

-

The night air of London is sharp and cold enough to cut through their thick expensive coats, chilling even to vampire senses, and leaves their breath billowing in white clouds ahead of them. There's a light drizzle, but Lestat doesn't mind it; it sets the streets glittering and makes them something almost magical. Very appropriate for the festive season, which is very much underway by now. Under the new city-wide stink of motor cars he can smell holly and pine like little sharp green bursts in the fug of the city.

"So," Claudia chirps from where she trots along beside him, "Where to next?"

He turns to look down at her and the streetlights make her hair gleam like spun gold, pinned up tight to her head. It is the fashion these days for women to wear it short and bobbed, and first Claudia had enjoyed the routine of taking scissors to it each night at her vanity, looking closely at a ladies publication for reference and fearless in her knowledge that it will grow back, and she can just try again tomorrow, but a month had seen her growing tired of it. So now each night, once she has finished dressing, she will wait by the fireplace with her little satin purse of hair adornments and the evening paper, and he will carefully fix her curls back whilst she reads him the events of the mortal world.

Neither of them had ever had any interest in the newspaper when they'd lived in New Orleans. But when they left Paris, the lack of awareness of human politics - and the lack of the newspaper sitting, neatly folded, on the armchair by the fire - had made them feel the lurching gap of Louis' presence unbearably. So one night Lestat had picked a paper up out of habit, and then kept picking them up, and eventually they'd begun to make a game of reading it aloud to each other as outlandishly as possible.

That was an aspect of Louis' absence that had been easy enough to overcome. Other aspects… not so much.

They'd been awkward with each other for a long while after they'd left Paris, for as much as Claudia was a buffer between her fathers, Louis was also a buffer between _them_. No longer could they get into fierce little arguments on the way back from hunting and be safe in the knowledge that they had a third-party opinion to resolve it when they got home. Lestat, afraid of the possibility of more violence between them - or worse, being left alone again - had held himself at a distance and had done his best to keep up a cold formality, and it had seemed that Claudia was doing the same.

And then, inevitably, all that tension had come to a head in an explosive disagreement over nothing at all, and Lestat had been convinced that it would be the end. But, they still needed each other, and no one was killed, and the next night Claudia had still climbed out of her coffin and wished him good evening. They just… carried on.

After that, things had been smoother. It had taken time, but they'd learnt how to be easy with each other again, and where the line was between a light argument and a genuine fight.

They'd focused on the things they both loved - they hunted together, they shopped together, they went to the theatre together, they socialised with mortals together, they decorated a hundred different homes across the world together - and they built themselves little routines to patch over the gaps Louis had left.

So Lestat hired the most expensively discreet accountant in Europe to take care of their finances, and Claudia read him the newspaper and Voltaire and Keats, and for the most part things worked surprisingly well.

(And some nights they'd go see a play, and as they walked out the streets would be busy with people, so Lestat would carry Claudia and she would loop her arms around his neck, and as they cut through the herd of mortals like sharks through the sea, they'd talk about the play and the weather and their plans and the clothes on the people around them, and when Claudia would giggle something huge and warm would grow in Lestat's chest, and he'd think, _my daughter, my_ daughter _, you could kill me all over again and I'd still love you_.)

Lestat makes a considering noise at her question, "I was thinking perhaps that pub on-"

"No!" Claudia laughs, cutting in. Nearly two centuries on and it still sounds like little silver bells when she laughs, "I meant, what _city_ next? I say Prague, it's supposed to be lovely this time of year - lots of markets. And good art!"

"Hmm, no, I think we should move away from Europe," Lestat says, "Don't you remember Louis' theory? I don't fancy getting stranded if things turn _unfriendly_ again."

Claudia groans, "You mean the one in his last letter, about the war? Louis _always_ has a theory that-" she pulls a mock serious expression and drops her voice to an approximation of Louis' low baritone, "- _war is just on the horizon_."

Lestat laughs, because it's a surprisingly good impression, and, well, she is _right_ about Louis.

He had written to Louis, in the end, because how could he not? He couldn't bear to lose him again. The first few letters had been as stilted and awkward as his interactions with Claudia had been. He'd honestly had no idea what to say; Louis had asked him for his _story_ , but where on earth was he supposed to begin with that? Where _he'd_ begun, with his father, mother, brothers, in that damp castle in Auvergne? It had seemed too raw, too bleak to begin there. He'd needed to work up to that kind of honesty.

In the end, it had been Claudia who'd inadvertently given him the solution. She'd made the most of his agreement to answer her questions, and question him she did - never more than a few at a time, and always so carefully worded, but so probing - and it occurred to him to use those snippets of information, the sting of revealing them already eased by their telling to Claudia, in his letters. _France, an actor, two older brothers, twenty, his name was Magnus and he was so old it had driven him mad_. Bit by bit, he'd revealed his story. It had been a jumbled mess, in all honesty, and there were aspects (the way he'd cried and screamed and begged to not be turned, Nicki's rage and madness, Those Who Must Be Kept) that he still clung to as his own tiny painful secrets, but he hated to have to sit and plan first. Better to just… let it all spill out, before he could overthink it and try to salvage his dignity.

But, oh, it was always _worth_ it. He'd thought Louis' promise to write back a paltry offering when he'd suggested it. And then that first letter had been placed in his hands - the crisp envelope, the blob of wax pressed with the Pointe du Lac family crest, the perfectly neat copperplate handwriting reading _his_ name, _Lestat_ \- and abruptly he understood.

Louis had taken time out of his night, probably multiple nights given that he still preferred to write at mortal speed, to respond to things _Lestat_ had said. Louis was out there in the world, somewhere, thinking about him, and there Lestat had been, holding the evidence in his hands.

Every letter Louis had sent had been polite, of course, because it was _Louis_ , but they'd also been curious, and if he'd been asked before whether he thought it was possible for words to be eager he would have laughed, however he'd known Louis well enough to read between the lines and see him fairly skirting the line of propriety in his eagerness for more information.

Once, this eagerness might have driven him to anger. Louis had never been satisfied, always wanting more information, more _answers_ , and being so disappointed when Lestat hadn't been able to give them to him. But Louis had left... and he still wanted to know anything Lestat could tell him. And he wanted to know because he wanted to understand Lestat.

Lestat isn't certain anyone else had ever wanted that before.

(One morning, just before dawn, when he was only half-awake and so it was easier to be honest with himself, he'd thought about Nicki, about their golden moments where they'd talked and talked and _understood_ each other, and the ghost of a thought had begun to creep into his mind that Nicki hadn't been nearly so interested in _understanding_ when it came to topics they'd disagreed on, in fact all Nicki had really done was wield his opinion like a hammer and-

-and Nicki was dead, and it all hurt too much, and what did it matter anyhow - because Nicki was _dead_ \- so he'd smothered the thought as the sun had risen and dragged him into sleep.)

It was much easier to give the information to Louis when they weren't face to face. It was awful, of course, to just throw his precious and terrible memories out into the world and pray that, in a few months, something would arrive back in a little envelope that, hopefully, wouldn't break his heart - but at least he hadn't been forced to see the scorn in Louis' eyes, or worse, the _pity_.

It's somewhat cathartic too, putting his life down in words. Like he can control it, somehow

For Louis' part, he writes little of himself, and never about where he is. Lestat picks up little hints, over the decades; that he might be in Asia for one letter, or Africa the next, though it's rarely much more than a hint. Mostly Louis likes to write about books, or philosophy, or politics. Sometimes, in the letters Lestat likes best, Louis will enclose something - _I saw this, and thought of you and Claudia_ \- and there will be some small bauble, or a pressed flower, or once an illustrated copy of _The Three Musketeers_ , and, Lestat's favourite, once there was a playbill for a performance of Macbeth. It had smelt of Louis' cologne, that one; as if after the performance he'd tucked it in his inner jacket pocket, close to his heart. And so after letting Claudia read the letter, Lestat - mortified even by himself in the moment - had begun keeping the playbill in his _own_ inner jacket pocket. It was more than a little ridiculous, but each time he had heard the paper crinkle it had sent a little burst of warmth through him, and that had made it worth it.

"Besides," Claudia continues, "They only just _had_ a war, surely no one can _afford_ to start a new one?"

Lestat grins toothily down at her, "You forget, chérie, humans are almost as bloodthirsty as we are."

Claudia gives a dainty little snort, then pauses to examine the intricate flower display in a shop window. She presses her small gloved hands to the glass, and he leans down to her, for all the world a doting father - but for her, a co-conspirator.

"Do you want it?" He asks her, too quiet for mortal ears, "It would look splendid on your dresser, and I could be persuaded into a little cat-burglary, once the foot traffic quietens…"

Claudia considers the idea for a moment, idly tracing a swirl in the condensation of the window with a finger.

"No, I want to head back via Leicester Square and see the lights," she says, decisively, turning away.

Lestat follows her, and glances back to set the location of the shop in his mind like a bookmark, resolving to return early the next evening to claim the flowers. Few people will turn down discreet little bribes nowadays; the mood of this post-war decade has been exhilarated excess, but he's been able to taste a change in the air for years and now the humans are noticing it too. Yes, the mortal shopkeeper will part easily with the flowers for a yarn about a sweet little girl - and a fat wad of paper money - and when Claudia finds them arranged beautifully on her vanity she will pretend she doesn't care at all, but she'll have a little curling smile all night.

"So, Prague?" Claudia prompts as they continue walking.

"I don't know," Lestat wrinkles his nose, "Louis predicted the last war, didn't he?"

Claudia rolls her eyes, "Yes, only about 25 years early, so it doesn't mean all that much," she sighs, "Well, if not Prague then where do you suggest? Should we find Gabrielle again and hole ourselves up in one of her nice slimy jungles until the hypothetical fighting dies down?"

In the end, it had taken close to five years to find Gabrielle - which, in the grand scheme of things, and considering the area in which she could have been, wasn't very long at all. Eleni had joined up with a new coven whose members were well-traveled and whose minds could reach far; she'd passed on that one of her friends had mentioned a brief glimpse of a lone vampire in Rome, had described them with a mane of golden hair and as vicious as a lioness, and Lestat knew they had to look into it.

Lestat had suspected for a long while that makers and fledglings are drawn to each other like magnets, and this suspicion was compounded when Gabrielle appeared on their hotel balcony on only their second night in the city.

Claudia and Gabrielle had circled each other like cats at first - curious but wary, and keeping their distance. It was clear that Gabrielle had felt cornered and awkward in the high opulence of their suite, holding herself stiffly in her faded khakis and muddy boots, startled by the concept of a granddaughter, and with Lestat's dogged efforts conversation had started slow. Things had picked up a little once Gabrielle got talking about her travels, but the night wasn't an overly comfortable one.

"I'm not certain she likes me," Claudia had said after Gabrielle left. There was a tinge of something tired and sad in her voice, and it occurred to Lestat for the first time that since the ordeal in Paris, Claudia might be somewhat… apprehensive about meeting new vampires.

"It's alright," Lestat had said, patting her on the shoulder, "She's been my mother for nearly a century and I'm _still_ not certain if she likes me."

The next night Gabrielle had appeared much earlier in the evening and had taken Lestat aside whilst Claudia was still dressing.

"If there was any good reason at all behind you choosing to turn a _child_ , please explain it to me now," she had all but growled, gripping his elbow.

"She was an orphan, dying of plague when we found her, what were we-"

"Who is we?"

Lestat had hesitated, floundering. He'd wanted to talk about Louis - he _always_ wanted to talk about Louis - but there were so many other threads tied into the story of Louis that it could take hours, and honestly, the tale of what had happened between the three of them was one he'd rather tell without Claudia's input.

And then he'd thought about Claudia's questions, and how he was writing their answers to Louis.

"It's much too long to explain now - I'll write it all out for you, in letters, and I'll leave them somewhere for you to collect when you next pass through... If you like?"

Gabrielle had given him a scrutinising look, but eventually had nodded and released his arm.

That night had gone much smoother, as they'd left the apartment to walk over the hills nearby, and out in nature Gabrielle had relaxed. And Gabrielle relaxing had made Claudia relax, so before long they were getting along excellently, just as Lestat had predicted. Little bits of their story had come out as they talked - namely that Claudia and Lestat had previously lived in New Orleans with another vampire named Louis, as most tales required that bit of context - but for the most part they'd spoken of the places they'd been and people they'd met since they left Paris, and it had made Lestat realise just how much they'd managed to cram into just a few years.

It had made him wonder just what they could have done in seven decades, if he'd only loosened his vicelike grip on his fledglings.

Gabrielle had stayed with them for longer than Lestat had dared to hope, disappearing off in the early morning and showing back up first thing in the evening, until Lestat had stopped being afraid that she might not come back. She'd even allowed him to purchase her a new outfit - the latest in men's fashion, naturally - so that they might enter society. No more than one event a week, Gabrielle had reluctantly agreed to, and had bourne Claudia fussing over her hair and clothes with silently aggrieved patience in a way she never would have done with him.

Claudia had clearly become something of a _soft spot_ for Gabrielle, and Lestat had taken great pride in it. Just as much as he'd delighted in seeing Louis completely throw himself into being Claudia's father, the love he'd felt for both his mother and his daughter had seemed to grow exponentially as he watched Gabrielle emerge from her taciturn shell to help Claudia find her gloves, or answer her questions about wild animals, or dance with her at the rare parties she'd consented to attend.

(And then the day had come that he'd _known_ was on the horizon, when Gabrielle took her leave to retreat back into the wilderness, and he'd held his breath waiting for Claudia to ask to leave with her - this kindred spirit, who she didn't fight with, who understood her in ways he never could, who didn't have that painful jagged past lurking just under the surface of every interaction - but Claudia had just hugged her and waved her off, and Lestat had said nothing, though it was burning on the tip of his tongue - _you chose me? You chose me?_

"Of course I did," she scoffed matter-of-factly when he'd finally managed to spit the words out three nights later, "Do you think I want to live out in the… in the wild? In the _swamps?_ Dress in rags and bury myself in the dirt, drinking the blood of beasts and the occasional lost explorer? No art, no theatre, _no society?_ " She scoffs again, "I like Gabrielle very much, but good god, I couldn't live like that."

She didn't say that it had anything to do with him, but the elephant in the room was the fact that he was fully recovered and she'd not even _mentioned_ him making her a new companion, so perhaps his company wasn't _entirely_ incidental in the matter.)

Lestat laughs, "Actually, I was thinking back to the 'new world'. There's rather a lot of it, and we only know one city. I think I'd like to see what all this hype is about _New York_."

Claudia nods, smiling as she mulls over the idea, "Yes, alright, why not - they have plenty of trains all over America now, we could have ourselves a nice tour of the place," she widens her eyes and makes her mouth a little O of excitement; her mock-childish face, "We can play at being _cowboys_ , out in the _desert_."

"Not much blood in the desert," Lestat chuckles.

"True," Claudia wrinkles her nose, "I don't fancy living on lizards and coyotes. The last two weeks on that boat having to ration rats was more than enough for me. Next time we cross the sea we're going by ocean liner. Full White Star luxury. Hundreds of passengers," she bares her teeth, "Nice varied menu."

"Oh, not White Star - they were behind the _Titanic_ , don't you remember?"

"Ah, that's true," Claudia gasps theatrically, "God, can you imagine if we'd been on that? Stranded in the middle of the ocean?" Then she doubles over with giggles, "We'd- we'd have to paddle our coffins back to America!"

Lestat grins, pausing in his stride to let her recover from her laughing fit. It's a far cry from the kind of loud helpless hysteria he can work himself up to but it makes him feel oddly warm to realise this is a habit she picked up from _him_. And it's a new one - back in New Orleans she'd been so preoccupied with coming across like the grown up she was inside that she would never have allowed the lapse of control raucous laughter entitled. He thinks that maybe, in the fifty years they've been together since Paris, she's learnt to… relax a little. Enjoy herself. He's not certain if she's managed to make peace with the disparity between her mental self and her physical form - possibly she never will, given how much of her lifestyle it governs - but travelling the world whilst finally prying the story of their kind from him seems to have at least loosened the grip her bitter obsession had held.

He can't pinpoint the moment that he knows; there is no specific moment of realisation, it just creeps up on him - a rising awareness that there's Another nearby, close, on this very street perhaps. He feels an energy building inside of him like electricity and when he looks up-

Louis.

It's Louis.

He blinks, once, twice, convinced it can't be real. But when he opens his eyes, Louis is still there, on the street corner, standing just outside of the endless stream of hurrying mortals, smiling. Lestat knows the moment Claudia sees him too when her hand suddenly closes around his in a tight squeeze.

It takes all of the self-restraint he possesses to walk, not run, and to return his polite smile, rather than enfold him in his arms and never let go. Up closer, he can see excitement his face, the way his smile is twitching at the corners, as if he's fighting to hold the feeling in. Louis looks good - Louis _always_ looks good, but it's more than just aesthetics now - there's something in his eyes... or rather the tired, haunted look that always lurked in them has gone. He looks confident, not defensive. He looks calm, not anxious.

He's not certain if it's Armand's company that's made this change, or just time, and the uncertainty rankles the joy a little and makes his stomach clench, but- he's _here_ , isn't he?

He's _smiling_ , isn't he?

Of course, the good suit helps too. Lestat has been rather put out for the last century or so that men's fashion in the western world has become so _drab_ , but the monochrome look does look exceptional on Louis. He looms, apart from the crowd of mortals, like a particularly attractive shadow, the barest hint of teeth glinting in the yellow streetlight and making the whole image seem dreamlike.

"Bonsoir," Louis says, when they reach him. His voice is the same as it always was; low, smooth, polite, but the smile makes it sound different. Warmer.

There are a thousand things Lestat wants to say - _I love you_ , and _I missed you_ , and _please don't leave me again_ \- but when he opens his mouth, he's tongue-tied. He hears Claudia's greeting and he tries to get the words out, _any_ words out, and what he manages is, "I like your suit."

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Claudia's face turn up towards him with a raised eyebrow. Louis blinks, then glances down at himself, as if he's forgotten what he's wearing.

"Thank you," Louis says, bemused, "Though I have to say I don't care much for this looser style of trousers."

"I know!" Lestat blurts eagerly, "Isn't it terrible, having so much material just flapping about your ankles?" He lifts his leg demonstratively, "I actually had the tailor fit mine tighter, it's much more comfortable."

Louis observes politely and nods, "Yes, you mentioned that in your last letter."

"Yes, the letter," Lestat nods vaguely, "You, ah, you got it then? The letter?"

Louis' smile twitches, "Evidently," he says.

Lestat feels panic crawling up his throat and heat flooding to his cheeks - Louis is just _standing_ there, right in _front_ of him, and he can't do anything but gabble about trousers and letters. This is ridiculous. This is embarrassing. Oh, god, why can't he talk? In his fantasies their meeting is romantic and suave, he's cool and collected and devastatingly attractive, and he convinces Louis to come back to their townhouse and ravish him with no more than a sly grin and a wink. But here he is, rambling about-

"Is Armand here with you?" Claudia asks, cutting through Lestat's rapidly spiralling thoughts with the icepick tone of a society matron enquiring after a branch of the family she particularly disapproves of.

"No," Louis responds, his own tone genial enough to be tactful but still firmly refusing to rise to offense, "He's in Edinburgh - he wanted to see a particular lecturer, and I was rather put off by the length of the journey, so I stayed behind," he licks his lips, then links his hands behind his back in his businessman posture, "He'll be gone about a month, and I was wondering if you two would be amenable to spending that time showing me around the city? I arrived a few days ago and I could do with a decent tour," he adds, somewhat awkwardly, "Only if you don't have any other plans, of course."

Louis knows they don't have plans because Lestat _told_ him so in his last letter, and it's ridiculous that he's trying to pretend that being in the same city as them with Armand away for a specific period of time is pure coincidence. Louis has planned this, has negotiated it with Armand, has _decided_ to find them. Perhaps he's not back forever, but suddenly seeing him in front of him, after decades of drinking up every word of every letter, lying in his coffin clutching the paper wondering where Louis is, and if he's thinking of him too, imagining a thousand different scenarios in which they finally meet again - well, the whole polite farce seems utterly absurd.

Lestat takes one stride forwards and wraps his arms around Louis.

And after a few terrible moments of being frozen, Louis hugs him back.

Lestat feels the cold tip of Louis' nose against his cheek, the thick wool of his coat under his hands, the clutch of Louis' fingers around his waist. Louis has changed his cologne - the new scent is similar, though not quite a match for the one that lingers on the playbill - and Lestat can smell ink and old books underneath it. Louis lets out a long low sigh and Lestat feels him relax, and it's the same sigh he used to do after returning from hunting during cold nights in New Orleans, when he'd settle down in his chair by the fire and feel the warmth seep into him, and he'd sigh because he was _home_.

Lestat tightens his hold and scrunches his eyes shut and presses his face into Louis' soft dark hair and thinks, _I missed you I missed you I missed you_.

"I missed you," he whispers, the words surprising him even as they leave his mouth.

He feels Louis' shoulders and chest move and the exhale against his cheek as Louis chuckles.

"I missed you too."

Lestat never wants the hug to end, but he feels Louis begin to pull back and remembers that they are on a street corner, and at least one of them has polite sensibilities that could be offended. As he releases Louis, he glances down to Claudia, to see if she'll step in to take her share of affection, but she doesn't. She smiles cooly, politely, hands tucked in the little embroidered pockets of her coat, and Louis seems to be able to read her, as he doesn't attempt to initiate anything, just nods.

Sadness hits Lestat with a pang in the chest; he'd hoped that after fifty years the two of them could let bygones be bygones, but perhaps the hurt between them runs deeper than he knows. He and Louis had always had a tumultuous relationship, and whilst it didn't necessarily make reconciling easier, they were at least practised at it. Claudia and Louis, on the other hand, had always been close, until something had soured between them that apparently couldn't be fixed just by time. They'd not spoken a great deal in the intervening years - only the small notes Claudia would occasionally leave on Lestat's letters that Louis would respond to in his - so perhaps cordiality is just the way things need to be at the moment.

Still, as he looks between them, he wishes Louis would sweep her up and Claudia would laugh and pepper his face with sweet little-girl kisses, like they did so many years ago.

Well, they still have the rest of the month.

"So," Louis says brightly, "Where are you two staying?"

"Not too far from here," Claudia replies, "We took a leaf out of your book and invested in real estate - I'm sure Lestat has told you in his letters?"

"Yes, yes I have," Lestat loops one arm through Louis', and offers Claudia his other, so that he can scoop her up and she can be at their height for the conversation. She accepts the lift and once she's comfortably settled on his hip Lestat sets them off walking, "We've just redone the parlour actually, you _must_ come over and see!"

"I want to go to Leicester Square," Claudia reminds him, voice somewhat petulant as she pokes him in the shoulder with a finger.

"We'll make a detour," Lestat assures her, then turns to Louis, "Will you come?"

Louis smiles warmly, green eyes soft with affection, "I would love to."

As the three of them join the bustling crowds in their inexorable flow through the city, Lestat breathes in the biting cold air with its fug of motor cars and its sharp pine tang, listens to the words and thoughts and fears floating like a cloud around the mortals, and holds his family close.


End file.
